Lambs to the Well-Planned Slaughter

The Californian Mutant X team quietly made their way out of Haven while the original team dealt with Jesse's breakdown. Chris gathered up the popcorn bowls, taking them to the penthouse to be cleaned rather than leaving them in Haven for the original team to have to deal with later, and Kevin telekinetically picked up the empty glasses and soda cans with a look across the lounge and the sweep of one hand. Owen carried Jamie's still-slumbering form to the elevator, shushing him softly when Jamie muzzily asked what was going on.

Standing in the elevator as it rose to the Majestic's penthouse, Chris noticed the tense set of Eve's shoulders and the tears brimming in her eyes. Shoving the stacked popcorn bowls in Josh's empty arms, Chris ignored his startled sputter and moved to Eve's side, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"Hey," he asked softly, using his power to reduce the volume of all sound coming from their corner of the elevator, making it so they could hear one another, but the rest of the team could not. "What is it? What was that, back there?" he finished gently, hoping not only that Eve could explain Jesse's behavior, but that asking her to do so would distract Eve from the guilt over it Chris could tell she was feeling.

"That..." Eve muttered with a resigned sigh, still staring straight ahead with her watering eyes, "..Was a situation that's been building for a while." She closed her eyes and shook her head once before continuing. "I knew it was building up; I totally should have seen that coming..." she finished bitterly, frowning at herself.

"Hey," Chris said, slightly sharply, as he gently but firmly grabbed Eve's chin and turned her head to meet his eyes. "I doubt it," he told her sincerely, staring into Eve's soft brown eyes with his own darker ones, determined to make her accept what he was saying. "I haven't known him all that long, but I get the feeling Jesse holds his cards fairly close to his chest," Chris told her, raising an eyebrow in a silent challenge for Eve to tell him he was wrong. She only blinked in response, which Chris considered as good as outright acknowledgment he was correct. "Not to mention you've had roughly half a billion other things on your mind, lately," Chris declared as he folded his arms and stepped back just the slightest bit, still using his power to keep their conversation private. "We're still worried about Adam, about what the Dominion's next crazy move without their head is going to be, Lexa's condition, the fact that Josh and I haven't started growth-spurting yet..." Chris' expression shifted to sympathetic as he continued to meet Eve's eyes. "Jesse's the one member of the team you haven't had to worry about!"

Chris paused, blinking as he considered that obviously his last statement was incorrect, or at least that someone should have been worrying about Jesse, since the poor guy had just had an emotional meltdown. Eve's natural mothering tendencies and guilt complex over helping Genomex create New Mutants in the first place made her take such things far too personally, particularly when she had at least three or four entirely-full-and-THEN-some plates spinning in the air simultaneously already. Chris also knew how badly the revelation of New Mutants' expiry dates had affected Eve, that she felt even more of a guilt complex, survivor's guilt, because she alone would survive if she couldn't recreate Adam's work.

She and Jesse, whom Adam had already cured, but he was the only New Mutant who would live, if things didn't change.

"Oh," Chris said softly, blinking as it suddenly made sense to him. "Is that it?" he asked Eve quietly, frowning as he met her eyes once more. "Jesse's wigging out because he's the only one who's guaranteed not to randomly expire, isn't he?" Chris asked rhetorically, frowning because he already knew he was right. "..And you know exactly how he feels," he continued, shaking his head as he stepped forward and gathered Eve in his arms, shushing her as she began to protest, then shushing her further when she nearly started to cry.

"Hey, hey hey hey..." Chris murmured softly, gently grasping Eve's chin again and making her meet his eyes once more as he smirked and ran his other hand up and down her back, soothingly. "Nobody's dying," he told her, giving Eve a firm nod to insist he was right. "You, Ms. Doctor Shriek Queen, are a genius geneticist, and even if it challenges you somewhat, you will keep all of us running long enough to find the answers. You're already doing it for Lexa; you saved Josh from the genetic disease created by the crazy mad-scientist gene-splicing wackjob responsible for all of us even existing in the first place, figured out Owen and Jamie's new powers. . .you're doing fine, Eve. Hell, you're doing a LOT better than 'fine'; you're a trooper."

Chris pulled on Eve's chin to tip her head down, bringing his other hand up to the back of her head and pulling her forward as he slightly rose up on his toes to plant a quick kiss to the middle of her forehead.

"We all know how much you love to poke and prod us, draw blood and shave us in uncomfortable places to attach electrodes, this just means you get to focus those efforts on Jesse until you figure out what Adam did," Chris declared as he released Eve and stepped back, ignoring the blush creeping up his neck. "The rest of us will enjoy the time off of the Hot Seat, until you figure it out and zap each of us in turn," he finished with his usual snarky sarcasm as he crossed his arms over his stocky chest, smirking at Eve with his eyes smiling even as they declared his actual sincerity.

Eve startled Chris by hurling herself forward and hugging him tightly, his arms still across his chest. She even startled a noise out of him when she turned to press a kiss to his jaw, smirking herself as she stepped back again.

"Except you," she told him sweetly, her smirk spreading into a grin as Chris sputtered, dropping his power. "I still get to poke and prod you and Josh, to figure out when your growth spurts will kick in and what they'll do!"

"Erm, yeah. Darnit," Chris muttered as Eve laughed, relievedly, and Josh simultaneously pouted and frowned with mild alarm.

Back in Haven, Shalimar had forced her way into Lexa's room before Lexa could close or lock the door, explaining what Jesse had meant, how his anguish had twisted his words to sound like something other than what he had been trying to say. In the computer hardware room, Brennan continued to hold Jesse, neither of them saying a word. Brennan just held Jesse until his tears were spent, until the convulsions of anguish that wracked Jesse's slighter physique had passed, expended against Brennan's larger frame. The desperate grip of Jesse's arms across Brennan's back had gradually eased as he slowly calmed; eventually, Jesse squeezed Brennan tight one more time, in silent thanks, then stepped back. He was as ready to face the tumultuous path ahead of him as he was going to be, at least for the moment.

Jesse met Brennan's concerned brown gaze with his own watery and red-rimmed blue one, giving him a nod of reassurance that he was alright, for the time being. Brennan returned the silent gesture, reaching out to give Jesse's shoulder a supportive squeeze of understanding, then turned to open the hardware room's door. He pulled it shut behind them as they left, following Jesse across Haven's main expanse toward their rooms on the far side. Walking behind Jesse, Brennan could see the tension returning to his shoulders as they neared their doors. Brennan reached out with one hand, grasping Jesse's shoulder again, from behind this time, and steered him towards Brennan's own room.

"Nope," Brennan said casually, deliberately downplaying the situation as he all but forced Jesse away from his own door and through Brennan's. "You're not sleeping in there. Hell, we've been here almost three weeks, but I bet you haven't slept in that bed more than a half-dozen times. It's probably covered in electronic thingummywhatsits; don't think I didn't see you drooling over the guts of Jamie's super-phone after Eve said you could have them."

" 'Thingummywhatsits'?" Jesse asked over his shoulder with a frown of disbelief. "Brennan, besides Eve's incredible adaptable-transmission technology, Jamie's phone also had wifi capabilities and field boosters to assist hacking I've never even dreamed of. Not to mention the software she's written to go with them, and her nanites..." Jesse trailed off, completely puzzled by the beaming grin Brennan was giving him.

"There's the real you. Over-expository rambling tech-geek Nerd Wonder; that's my Jesse," Brennan told him as he closed the door, then let his expression drop into a more seriously somber one. "Hey," Brennan began, ducking his head slightly to make a point of meeting Jesse's eyes, of gaining his complete attention. "The absolute last thing you need right now is to be alone with your thoughts, the way they've been chasing each other all day. Hell, the way they have since you found out about expiry dates and that you're past yours. You're sleeping in here," Brennan declared, nonchalantly stripping his shirt off, as un-self-conscious of his upper body as ever. "I dunno if this was the 'master bedroom' of the bomb shelter when it was built, or just intended for couples after Eve remodeled it, or Hell, maybe it was Owen's old room or something, but for whatever reason, it's got a king-sized bed. We both fit, even if I am six-three; you know that."

Brennan turned to his dresser, taking only a moment to search through the few clothes he had in it and pull out a tank-top and soft pair of shorts, placing them on top of the dresser if Jesse should decide he wanted them, but leaving everything unsaid, regardless. He turned back around to meet Jesse's gaze once more, ready to offer a final word of support and then downplay the tension with some sort of wisecrack, but the words died in his throat when he saw Jesse's face. Brennan didn't need their old teammate Emma's telempathic gifts to know what Jesse was feeling; his expression clearly said another damn traitorous thought had just crossed his mind unpleasantly, startling him with some new conclusion. Some small background part of Brennan's mind wondered if that was what it had been like for Emma, knowing what people were feeling, but not necessarily why.

"Jess?" Brennan asked softly, carefully. "–What is it?"

Jesse looked up to meet Brennan's eyes again, his own beginning to well up in reaction to the thought that had caught him off guard.

"You," Jesse choked out, then simultaneously winced at the broken sound of his voice and snorted in derision at it, at the fact his thoughts were doing exactly what Brennan had just said, even though he was still there. Jesse coughed and cleared his throat before looking up at Brennan and beginning again. "You said you're not leaving, none of you, Eve can keep you going while we work towards the cure..." Jesse sniffled as he nodded, conceding Brennan had a point, but there was still fear in his eyes as he looked into Brennan's, before he could force himself to continue and finish his explanation. "But. . .the Cali team's going through their growth spurts, like we did– —but you, Brennan. You're more unstable than the rest of us. You had a second spurt, when we were bodyguarding Senator Morrison's daughter..." Jesse broke off, rapidly blinking the tears out of his eyes, unable to hide the fear in them as he stared at Brennan. "..What if that happens again? What if your greater instability means you reach your expiration sooner?" Jesse forced himself to ask, his voice nothing more than a fearful whisper.

Brennan shrugged in response, because it was all he could do.

"Then we get Anne to re-stabilize me, like she did for Kevin, like Emma did for me back then," Brennan answered confidently, but he made sure he didn't sound deluded by overconfidence, either. He had to get Jesse to realize that they could neither stick their heads in the sand and ignore the problem, nor could they let it dominate their lives and direct their every decision and action. They had to simply carry on, carefully and wisely, and do the best they could. There was nothing more anyone could do, so they would just have to make that be enough.

"I'm not leaving you, Jess," Brennan told him, putting one hand on Jesse's shoulder again, before shaking it in a gesture of reassurance and moving away to turn down the bedcovers. "Neither is Lex, or Shal, or any of the others. You are not alone, and you're not going to be, either," Brennan declared confidently as he toed off his boots and shucked his jeans, tossing them over a chair before sliding under the covers on one side of the bed. "Don't make me quote Sonny & Cher 'I've Got You, Babe' lines at you. You can stay here, with me, tonight. . .for as long as you want; you know that. Or with Shal, she's your sister and would do anything for you; you know that, too. Hell, I bet you could even sleep with Lexa, if you apologize for the way you phrased yourself earlier, first," Brennan finished with a smirk.

Jesse scowled with false irritation as he approached his side of the bed, both of them knowing how much Brennan's words actually meant to him. . .then he grabbed his pillow and whapped it down into Brennan's startled face. He grinned fiercely as Brennan cried out in shocked surprise, drawing the pillow back before swatting it down again, repeatedly. Brennan continued to protest, trying to shield his face with his forearms, giving up and just laughing as Jesse shifted aim to swat Brennan's belly, then his knees, then back up to his face when Brennan instinctively reached to protect his groin. Brennan's laughter pushed Jesse over the edge, causing him to collapse to the bed awkwardly atop the pillow, guffawing so hard he could barely breathe.

"That's better," Brennan declared, shaking his head but thrilled to see Jesse laughing and meaning it, feeling it. "Take your shoes off and get the light, Nerd Wonder."

"Tem ev'ew emit tsrif eht si siht hgouht neve, taht em dlot ouy. Nialpahc Sicnarf er'uoy dna, Poshib Nhoj si eman ym."

"What!? Who the Hell are you, and how'd you get in here?" Chaplain demanded, his brows lowered angrily beneath his overly-coiffed blond bangs. A neon-green Psionic starburst manifested above his frowning eyebrows, its glow intensifying as his anger and alarm grew.

"I said, 'My name is John Bishop, and you're Francis Chaplain. You told me that, even though this is the first time we've met. Because I'm a Precognitive Psionic, on both counts," the intruder explained, an even brighter starburst appearing in front of his own forehead with apparently no effort whatsoever.

"What..." ..do you mean, how could you possibly know that? Chaplain began to question, his words trailing off as he realized Bishop had already proven his ability. "Why are you here, and what do you want with me?"

Bishop smiled.

"All time is 'now' to me, backwards, forwards, it's all the same..." he broke off to turn in a circle, craning his neck awkwardly to look back over his shoulder at Chaplain, his gaze crazed beneath the wild riot of his black hair. "..I'm not linear. I know things, many Things, and how they have come and will come together.

"You desire vengeance, don't you?" Bishop asked suddenly, twisting his body to face Chaplain once more, rotating his head to keep his eyes on Chaplain's face the entire time –it was more than slightly disturbing. "You and your people, jettisoned from Genomex, or the GSA rather, Gabriel destroyed Genomex the other day a few years ago, didn't he? But it's not your former employers you wish to punish, is it? No, it is the merry band of Mutants X you hate, for their exposing your man Feldspar and knocking down your house of cards. All would still be well and you and yours would still be atop the food chain, were it not for Adam's heroes.

"Heroes and villains hoping for humaneness in our inhumanity, father and grandfather to us all our greatest enemy and only hope. Those Children of Genomex trained by Adam and assisted by Eve would save all if they could, but consider those like us beyond their help..."

Bishop's rambling broke off, and a vague sense of lucidity returned to his eyes as he stared into Chaplain's, then smiled with anticipation, already knowing the answer to his next question.

"Would you and yours like to help me and mine prove them wrong?"

The next morning, each of the members of Mutant X woke up to find a note taped to the frame of their bedroom doors, reading:

I CALL A DO-OVER. EVERYBODY RELAX, AND WE'LL TRY TO GET IT TO STICK, THIS TIME. —EVE

Being completely wrung-out, Jesse was still fast asleep when Brennan quietly got up and discovered his note upon opening his door. Smirking, he went to check the note attached to Jesse's door, discovering it had an additional message:

Jesse, I think it would help if you talked to Anne about this situation. . .I know how you're feeling, but Anne's an experienced counselor, has helped New Mutants with all sorts of situations. I can set up a meeting with her if you'd like, briefing her as much or as little as you want me to. Just let me know. —Eve

Deciding it sounded like a good idea, Brennan removed both Jesse's note and his own, re-taping Jesse's in its place, so that Jesse would see it when he got up. If Jess went to talk to Anne, it would make a good opportunity for Brennan and Shalimar to talk to Lexa about things, without her feeling sensitive to Jesse's presence, given their histories and the way his anguish had sounded the night before. Smiling hopefully, Brennan headed for Haven's kitchen and the smell of brewing coffee, hoping to rescue breakfast before Shalimar burned it.

In the Majestic's penthouse, Chris awoke first, as he usually did, blinking in surprise when he discovered his note and wondering when Eve had put it there. Had she gotten up absurdly early. . .or stayed up too late, fretting about how their relaxing Movie Night had ended so poorly, and decided to do something about it before going to bed. Sighing because he knew the second possibility had to be the case, he turned to face Eve's door across the living area, and reached out with his New Mutant ability. Muting even the soft background noises of electronics humming quietly in the entertainment center and the ticking of the clock on the kitchenette wall, Chris gradually magnified the volume of all sound coming from Eve's door. After a moment, he could hear more humming, from various electronics in Eve's suite, and he muted each of those sounds as they grew loud enough for him to differentiate. After another moment or two of concentration, Chris could hear Eve's breathing, in the steady and monotonous cadence of sleep.

Shaking his head as he dropped his power, hoping Eve slept in enough to make up for however late she had stayed up, not to mention how ragged she had been running herself lately, Chris decided to get dressed and go eat breakfast in the Majestic's restaurant. He didn't want the sounds of cooking or the smell of food or coffee to wake Eve any earlier than necessary.

Owen awoke only a short while after that, shifting to Feral mode and lying still in his bed, listening to the rest of the penthouse. He could hear the clock ticking in the kitchenette, and Jamie's slightly heavy breathing to the right, because he left his bedroom door open to his sitting room. . .he liked to be able to keep an ear on Jamie, just in case any of his insecurity dependencies gave him a nightmare or anything. Owen certainly knew how much nightmares could suck, and he knew Jamie liked the comfort of knowing someone was looking out for him. To his left, Owen couldn't hear anything at all, so Chris was either sleeping quietly with his bedroom door closed, or he was already awake and had left the penthouse. Given that Chris was an early riser and generally as hyperactive as a pre-teen on a cappuccino buzz, Owen figured he had left. Lying there, Owen contemplated the fact that he was feeling lazy-ish, not particularly wanting to throw himself into his normal workout routine. Eventually, he flung himself out of bed and pulled on a pair of shorts and a well-worn tee shirt, knowing that waking himself up with his workout would make the rest of the day go more smoothly.

Raising an eyebrow in surprise at finding a note taped to his doorframe, Owen frowned slightly as he read it, then snickered. Pulling the piece of paper off his doorway, Owen closed the door and crumpled the note as he returned to bed, accurately tossing the ball of paper in the wastebasket under his desk without even thinking about it as he stripped and crawled back under the covers. He could get up later, when he heard Jamie, or Chris came back and started being his usual manic self.

Some while later, Kevin blinked awake when Josh shifted against him, his back against Kevin's side. Moving slowly so as to not attract the attention of Josh's Feral senses and wake him, Kevin slid out of bed. After going to the bathroom and quietly pulling some clothes on, Kevin opened their sitting room door to discover Eve's note. Pausing for a moment to consider, Kevin smiled to himself and left their rooms, crossing to the kitchenette to make his boyfriend breakfast in bed.

Since Josh didn't drink coffee, there was no fresh-brewing scent to awaken Eve or re-awaken Owen. Owen had recommitted himself to sleep, so the scent of frying bacon didn't rouse him, either.

Josh remained blissfully asleep, enjoying the pleasing aroma of frying bacon as he dreamed, until Kevin slid back into their bed with a tray of breakfast. Grinning, Kevin waved buttered toast, a cheddar and bacon omelette big enough for two –even if one was a Feline Feral–, a can of Josh's beloved Diet Coke, and a glass of orange juice under his nose until Josh blinked awake in surprise.

Looking up from the tray of breakfast in front of his face, Josh grinned widely at his lover as he sat up against the bed's headboard, and Kevin shifted so the outside of their thighs were pressed together, placing the tray across both their laps.

"I. . .Smell. . .BACON!!" Josh declared in a gruff cartoon voice, mimicking the old "Beggin' Strips" dog treat commercial. Kevin laughed and kissed him, holding his glass of orange juice steady with one hand while Josh turned slightly, holding the side of Kevin's head with one hand and deepening the kiss.

"Have I told you how much I love you?" Josh asked as their faces drew apart, grinning again and even more as Kevin grinned back.

"Not today, you haven't," Kevin teased, his grin softening into a smirking smile, his eyes still laughing as he turned his head to press a kiss to the inside of Josh's wrist.

"I love you tons," Josh declared, stroking Kevin's face slightly before finally withdrawing his hand. "I love you more than sleeping in. More than chocolate, more than any kind of candy. More than music, more than combat, more than my car, more than sex, even!" Josh finished with a laughing smile of his own.

"And that's saying something..." Kevin snickered, then glanced down at the tray across his left thigh and Josh's right. "Even more than bacon?" he asked, raising one eyebrow in a wry smirk.

Josh very deliberately looked down at their plate of breakfast and frowned. He pouted his lower lip out, frowned harder, and shifted restlessly. The breakfast tray continued to move after Josh settled, wiggling because Kevin was struggling to keep from bursting out laughing, still holding his orange juice steady. Josh finally looked up to make his confession, before he broke entirely, knowing he would crack up and ruin the façade of their joke.

"Yes," Josh declared as he met Kevin's eyes, his own nearly watering with suppressed laughter. "But only a little," he finished, his own shoulders twitching while Kevin's continued to shake with restrained mirth. The tension around Josh's eyes grew more severe as he struggled to hold his pseudo-somber facial expression while he delivered his punchline: "Mostly because you bring me bacon."

Kevin brayed laughter as Josh cracked up, both of them throwing their heads back, Josh's right arm across Kevin's shoulders and Kevin's left behind Josh's back as they laughed. Eventually they calmed, and Kevin turned his head once more, leaning in to buss his lips against Josh's, who had automatically mirrored the movement, his eyes sliding shut as their mouths drew close.

"I Love You, too, Josh," Kevin declared, tensing his arm behind Josh's back in a pseudo-hug, his voice more serious than Josh's had been, even though Kevin's eyes were still alight with mirth. . .and mischief. "You and your meat," Kevin finished, sliding his hand down Josh's side and pinching the top of his ass. Josh twitched in surprise and laughed, nearly dumping his can of Diet Coke off the tray, but Kevin had known what would happen and telekinetically settled Josh's soda back into place with a single instant of focus.

Josh and Kevin smiled at one another once more and tucked into their breakfast.

Not long before Kevin got up, Chris had returned from his breakfast downstairs at the Majestic's restaurant. His sonic sensitivity made Chris aware that either Josh or Kevin had gotten up and was using their bathroom, and started making breakfast a few moments later, but he decided not to disturb Kevin.

Chris could tell it was Kevin because he had made noise crossing the living area and moving around the kitchenette; Josh was almost silent naturally, thanks to his Feline Feral mutation. Chris figured Kevin had decided Eve's note was a prefect reason for him and Josh to sleep in and pretty much spend the day together in their rooms, probably in bed. Not that Chris wanted details, but he certainly couldn't blame them. Life had been crazy enough for the past few weeks that the two of them hadn't had as much time to themselves as normal, especially since Kevin had been forced to deal with the instability of his growth spurt and Josh had spent time recovering from the Creator's Feral Fever virus.

Glad that his friends had the chance to make up for some lost time, Chris smiled to himself as he finished opening a few programs on his computer and started working on some songwriting. His sonic sensitivity felt the presence of Josh and Kevin's words after Kevin woke his boyfriend, and Chris' renewed smile spread into a grin when he heard them both crack up a few moments later, Josh's bellowed laughter echoing through the wall.

In Haven, Lexa's room was the closest to Haven's kitchen, sharing a wall, in fact. She gradually awoke to the sound of Brennan and Shalimar's breakfast conversation, which had apparently been growing sillier as it progressed, frequently punctuated by one or the others laughter. Lexa lay in her bed for a few moments, remembering the night before. She had been trying to help Jesse face his emotional insecurities, much as he had done for her in the past. Somehow, she had only managed to make things worse, until Jesse had finally screamed at her, not just that he wanted her to leave him alone, but that he didn't want to see her. She had fled, miserable, not understanding how it could have gone so badly, how sweet, caring Jesse could say something like that to her—until Shalimar had forcibly followed Lexa into her room and explained what Jesse had meant. That he didn't want to see her gradually break down and die in front of him, that he couldn't watch her expire when he himself wasn't going to.

Smiling at the fact that she had a real family for the first time in her life, that she had people who cared about her and would look out for her the way she had done for her brother Leo, Lexa reached for the hairbrush on her nightstand and sat up to slide her feet into her slippers. She smelled coffee, and she had family members to go have breakfast and share laughter with. Lexa couldn't be sure how many more breakfasts she was going to be around to enjoy, if Adam's research wasn't rediscovered soon, so she was going to enjoy this one while she could.

The original Mutant X team's breakfast was eventually starting to wind down to a leisurely close when Shalimar finally heard Jesse open Brennan's door. There was a rustle of paper and a pause as he read Eve's note, and Shalimar turned to Brennan with a grin.

"One more round of eggs, Sparky," she told him, jerking her head in the direction of his room when Brennan frowned at her in confusion.

"You're hungry again now, after you finished eating more than. . .oh, Jess. Gotcha," Brennan cut himself off as he realized what Shalimar meant, standing to prepare another plate. By the time Jesse had finished in the bathroom, dressed in fresh clothes, and joined them, Brennan had Jesse's breakfast ready and was just setting the plate on the kitchen table.

As Brennan set Jesse's breakfast down and was sitting back down again himself, Lexa decided to take the bull by the horns when Jesse reached the table, still shuffling in his pre-coffee zombie state. She stood, catching Brennan and Shalimar by surprise as well as Jesse when she stepped forward and hugged him.

"Feeling better?" Lexa asked with a warm smile as she drew back, her hands still on Jesse's shoulders. "Sorry I pushed last night; I didn't think about the fact that I'm the biggest reminder to you," she explained, trying to show that she understood without bringing up the ugly details of their specific situations.

"I. . .am, a little. Thanks, Lexa," Jesse stammered after moment, at first surprised by her response, but appreciating it regardless. Jesse smiled as he considered the fact that being direct and to the point certainly was entirely in Lexa's character, even if the sensitivity she was demonstrating usually wasn't. "And Eve's going to set me up with Anne, work through some of it. She's an empathic counsellor, after all," Jesse finished, flicking a glance at Brennan and nodding in return after Brennan ducked his head the slightest bit, acknowledging that he had moved Jesse's note.

"Oh!" Shalimar said with mild surprise, then blinked as she thought about it and remembered their first meeting with Anne. "Right, she counsels New Mutants on entering the Underground, helps with post-traumatic stress when they're rescued from the GSA. . .that's a good idea," she finished, nodding and looking at Jesse hopefully.

"I'll call Eve to set it up after breakfast, find out when Anne's free," Jesse replied, giving Brennan a grateful nod as he started eating.

Owen had eventually gotten up again, vaguely surprised that Chris was being relatively quiet on his computer, but he decided even Chris could have his sensitive moments. True, they were often loud moments, like when he woke them all up for his impromptu breakfast a week ago, but then he had been quiet after breakfast, to let Josh and Kevin sleep. Owen realized Eve must have stayed up late to put notes on their doors and that Chris must have figured the same, so he was being quiet to let her sleep in.

Shifting to Feral mode once more, Owen heard Jamie still sleeping to his right and Chris tinkering on his computer to the left. He heard Eve on her phone in the kitchenette, and the sound of the coffee pot being slid out of the coffee maker. When Chris paused in his typing, Owen could just detect the rumble of Kevin's voice pitched low in his and Josh's bedroom, and Josh's equally subdued chuckle in response.

Owen blushed and threw himself out of bed, quickly pulling on his clothes from earlier and moving to join Eve in the kitchenette. Suddenly, Owen's morning Pop-Tarts and leaving the penthouse for his workout sounded like a good idea. He knew the tones of voice Kevin and Josh were using, even if he couldn't make out what they were saying. They were still in their bedroom, in their bed, and would be putting it to use for something besides sleeping as soon as everyone else left the penthouse. . .and maybe before that, if it took too long. Not that Owen held it against them or anything, heck, he was slightly jealous of them for having each other, wished that he had someone to wake up with each day. . .but the thought of what they might specifically be doing with each other made Owen slightly uncomfortable in ways he didn't like to think about. Not that he was homophobic or anything, hell, he was Feral and more inclined than many gays to casually touch or drape an arm over another guy's shoulders. . .but that wasn't quite the same. He had been accepted as a fine physical specimen for partying by the street gang he had joined at sixteen, and sure, that was mostly because of his ridiculously high alcohol-tolerance and by the girls who hung out with the gang, but not entirely...

Shaking his head, Owen deliberately emptied his mind of thoughts that wanted to chase themselves into dark corners he didn't want to look at and focussed on getting food and coffee. He didn't want to think about the second-darkest time of his life, that had directly led to the darkest, being captured and tortured by the GSA, and he didn't want to examine nameless discomforts, either. The mindless pleasure of the endorphine rush from a good workout sounded like a much better idea.

Owen grunted a greeting to Eve as he fetched a mug and poured his coffee; she waved back with her free hand, the other holding her phone to her ear, wrapping up a conversation.

"..Okay, Anne, Jesse will be at your place at one o'clock, or just before, depending on traffic. I'll have the cab here at quarter-til, anyway, and you can bring him with you to Eloy's afterward. We all slept in today, so we'll head there for a very late lunch. Or early dinner, whatever," Eve said as Owen put his Pop-Tarts in the toaster. "Right, I'll just let Jesse know, and he'll see you in about 45 minutes. Bye, Anne," Eve finished with a smile, ending the call and slipping her phone into her pocket. Owen blinked in surprise and glanced at the microwave; it was indeed already after noon. He'd gone back to sleep for much longer than he had thought.

"Holy Crap, Jamie's still sound asleep!?" Owen asked with a small measure of alarm. "We all went to bed before two, and he slept through half the movie! And he'd just had a nap before that; that can't be healthy!" he exclaimed, looking to Eve with worried eyes. Eve frowned in thought, her warm brown eyes trailing to the middle distance as she contemplated, then focussed on Owen's worried green ones once more.

"Well, it's not necessarily unhealthy, but it deserves checking into," Eve agreed with a nod. "I need to call Jesse back; you go wake Jamie up, let me know if he's excessively confused or takes too long to become cognizant," she instructed as she got her phone out again, her mind already sprinting ahead to consider Jamie's situation. "I was waiting for his leg to heal up before I started testing his new ability, but maybe we should go check it in the medical lab, at least preliminarily. He used it on that tree the day before yesterday, and then his fatigue set in; you said he was nearly passing out after using it on the concrete wall in the Dominion's installation. . .we need a better idea of how it works, if elasticizing certain substances drains him more, or greater amounts, duration he maintains it... Yeah, we need answers, before Jamie hurts himself without realizing it," Eve finished with a nod, meeting Owen's eyes once more to let him know she was on the same page with him. Owen nodded back once as he stood, swiftly crossing the living area of the penthouse and letting himself into Jamie's rooms.

"Man, are they ever gonna leave?" Josh groused to Kevin as he listened to Eve on the phone with Jesse while Owen fetched Jamie. "And Chris is still here; I can hear him on his computer," Josh muttered, his eyes in their jade green Feral mode as he listened to the penthouse, staring at his fingertips as he picked at the surgical glue that was beginning to peel off of them. He was irritated because the other residents of the Majestic's penthouse were taking their time leaving; he was looking forward to time alone in bed with Kevin, with the rest of the penthouse empty.

It was an unspoken rule that Josh and Kevin didn't do too much fooling around while their roommates were home, or at least not anything intense. . .they were both far too noisy in the depths of passion for it to be comfortable for anyone. Sure, they could go ahead and have sex anyway, but it would be rude. None of the other members of the Californian team had a regular lover, much less one they lived with, so it wasn't exactly fair if Josh and Kevin were to rub their faces in the fact. On the other hand, if the other residents of the penthouse didn't give them time to be physical with one another, they would just have to deal with listening to it; rude went both ways.

"Would you stop picking at those?!?" Kevin huffed when he turned and saw Josh peeling his fingertips again. He threw one thigh across Josh's legs as he rolled onto his lover, grabbing both of Josh's hands with one of his own and wrapping the other around the back of Josh's head. Josh obligingly relaxed his fingers in Kevin's grip, turning his head and closing his eyes as he leaned into Kevin's grip, then blinking in surprise when Kevin bit his chin instead of kissing him. Kevin drew back, frowning determinedly as he stared into Josh's confused eyes.

"You said yesterday the chlorine in the pool made your fingertips hurt; that means you've still got open wounds, probably under the nails," Kevin warned him. "I don't care if you're Feral, you are going to get an infection if you keep disturbing them! You're lucky you are Feral, the way you pick at wounds, you would totally scar if you weren't." Kevin's frown shifted into a pout at Josh, which was all the more dramatic with the generosity of Kevin's lips. "Never mind everybody else leaving; I'm not going to give you any if you keep that up! You think you're putting fingers with wounds you've agitated up my ass, you're crazy. That's BEGGING for an infection, and probably a nasty one! The only part of the human body with more bacteria in it than the intestinal tract is inside the mouth!"

"Please, like there's anything in your mouth that isn't in mine," Josh smirked back. "And we're both versatile; you can top!" he declared, settling back into the pillows with a smug smirk.

Kevin pursed his lips in mild frustration, his hazel gaze smoky even as it frowned.

"Tempting as that may be —and I just might—" Kevin said, his voice dropping lower again as he slid one hand under the bedcovers and down Josh's thigh, "..I don't want you to get any other infections, either!" he declared, pinching a few of Josh's leg hairs and tugging sharply to demonstrate he was serious.

Josh yelped, both frowning and pouting as he twitched his leg to dislodge Kevin's pinching grip.

"Besides, what if I want you to do me?" Kevin asked, smirking at his lover.

"Hmmmm..." Josh mused, frowning to hide his smirk, because he knew his answer would push one of Kevin's negative buttons. "..Well, I could get a pair of disposable gloves from Medical..." Josh began, then laughed when Kevin sputtered and tried to whap him upside the head with the arm he still had above the covers.

"GAH! No!" Kevin protested. "It's bad enough we've got hot guys stripping in Medical more often than not; I do not need any other sexual associations with my workplace!" he huffed.

"So, no sex on a med-bed, then?" Josh asked with a raised eyebrow and a smirk. Kevin groaned in exasperation and lowered his forehead to rest against Josh's chest. Josh raised one hand and ran it through the hair covering the back of Kevin's neck as he continued: "Or maybe reverse cowgirl on the Hot Seat? That'd wor—"

Kevin yelled in wordless protest and clamped both hands over Josh's mouth. It didn't matter that he couldn't see Josh's face, making the manic grin in his eyes out of sight; Kevin could feel it on Josh's mouth, beneath his fingers.

"Chris! C'mon, I'm getting my poking stick out for Jamie, and Jesse's busy, so you're getting tested for growth spurt potential, too!" Eve hollered from not far outside their sitting room door. She was brilliant, after all, and knew that Kevin and Josh were waiting to have the place to themselves. If Chris decided to protest that Eve had said she would be poking Josh for the same reasons, she would tell him he could try informing Josh he was needed in the medical lab. Eve certainly wasn't going to do it.

"Thank God, Finally," Josh and Kevin muttered in sync, grinning at one another as they heard Chris follow the other Californian members of Mutant X out of the Majestic's penthouse.

"CRAP!" Anne Smith declared as she hung up her phone, glancing wildly around her apartment. "Crap, crap, crap!" she muttered repeatedly as she sprinted through the apartment, trying to rearrange its contents to her satisfaction, while simultaneously trying to make the place look "ordinary", as if it always looked the way she was rearranging it.

"Jesse's going to be here in less than an hour; I SO do not have enough time to get ready!!" she moaned as she gathered up personal belongings, snatching up anything too identifying. "Okay, they know I teach Tai Chi, bonsai trees and bamboo can stay. . .candles are fine, everybody's got candles, but all the tie-dye's got to go–—CRAP, all the New Age crystals and dreamweavers have to go, too!" she moaned, snatching up a handful of shimmering crystals and sprinting for her bedroom.

Anne returned with an empty cardboard box, quickly filling it with the rest of her crystals and the various colorful dreamweavers she had hung throughout her living room. She also cleared her desk and walls of most of their photos: a shot of her and Eloy Itangniak smiling into the camera together on her desk, a picture of both of them along with Ketch and Stacy at the diner on the wall, another framed photo on the other wall of her first class of Tai Chi students in LA when they graduated, a picture of her smiling proudly at the opening of her boutique, "Newly Aged Fashions" at Crenshaw Plaza. Anne paused at her electric fireplace, considering the two photos standing on the mantle there. The first one she looked at sadly, remembering the happiest and most fulfilling years of her life, but it obviously had to go. She quickly put it in the box, facedown, knowing she didn't have time to waste. The other she contemplated briefly. It was a candid shot inside Eloy's Diner that Stacy had taken last Christmas; Eloy was wearing a red-and-green striped hat with elf ears on its sides, Anne was wearing a traditional Santa hat, and Eloy had just put a headband with red reindeer antlers sprouting from it on top of Grant's perpetually scowling face. His scowl was actually missing in the photo, Grant's face scrunched up in shocked surprise at Eloy's action. Eloy was grinning maniacally, and Anne was howling laughter in the background.

Shaking her head as she smirked, Anne put the Christmas photo in the box as well. Her face was small and in the background, and not particularly distinguishable with her eyes closed and mouth wide open as she laughed so hard she was bending over double, but she couldn't risk it.

Double-checking her desk, Anne nearly slapped her own forehead when she recalled the "Family & Friends" paperweight she had there. It was a glossy black cube, designed to have photos slid into each of its six faces, or at least the five that weren't resting on the surface beneath it. Anne had pictures in those five sides, of Eloy, Stacy, Ketch, Bryan the evening cook, and herself. She actually had the photo of herself facing the rear of the paperweight, it symbolized their unity as the operators of the Mutant Underground in LA, but Anne wasn't vain enough to need her own face staring at her all by itself. Hastily, she plucked the photo from the five-inch cube and put it in the box, dropping the paperweight back on the desk. It bounced, flipping onto one side, and Anne quickly stood it back upright on top of the papers there, sighing with frustration at the further delay.

"I am so not going to have enough time..." she muttered, hurrying to put the box in her bedroom, then rushing back to the living room to collect the tie-dye and patchwork decorations. After hauling those into the bedroom as well, Anne returned to the living room and huffed with frustration, wondering what she could do to redecorate in less than half an hour. There was no time to go get anything, and the room looked ridiculously barren; it was clearly missing items, and that wouldn't work either.

"Think, Girl, think!" Anne berated herself. "Desperate necessity is the mother of invention; you have got to have something you can fake decorations wi—Christmas lights!" Anne cut herself off to exclaim, turning to run for the entryway closet and dragging her box of Christmas decorations down from the top shelf. She quickly dug out the icicle-lights she normally hung from her balcony railing in December, and strung them across the picture hooks she had left barren on the living room walls. Plugging the second string into the first, Anne managed to wrap the lights around and down the floorlamp at one end of the couch, plugging them in at the same outlet.

"Better," she murmured, frowning as she surveyed her hasty work, then gasped as inspiration struck and sprinted for the front closet once more. She returned with the large sewing kit she used to inspire new ideas for her boutique, digging pastel ribbons and a number of squares of sheer fabric from it. Anne tied the ribbons in twists to hang from the hooks the lights were strung across, bringing a touch of needed color back to the white-walled room since she had removed the tie-dye, patchwork, and dreamcatchers. She replaced the patchwork pillows and throws by artfully draping the sheer cloths in their places, arranging three of them to overlap across the back of the wall-white couch and wrapping the largest one over the small white throw-pillow on the easy chair, all alone with its larger complimentary patchwork pillow having been banished to the bedroom.

"I'll just take the chair while we talk; Jesse will feel like he should be on the couch anyway, being the 'patient'," Anne nodded to herself, knowing how Jesse's mind worked. "Okay, one blank hook left on the other wall, what the heck can I put there– —oh, home!" she realized, running to her bedroom one last time. She returned with a large poster of the Seattle skyline, nodding to herself as she hung it on the wall behind her dining table, across from the couch. "I got that after getting here to LA, so that's fine," Anne decided, relaxing now that she had the room looking like something normal, even if a bit austere. "I'll just tell him I like my décor Spartan, easier to visualize with all the white space," she decided, nodding as the idea formed. "Makes sense, even Eve thinks I'm a visual thinker because of the illusions. Okay, scent is the strongest memory trigger, just need to change that..."

Anne pondered for a moment, her gaze going vague as she allowed her eyes to trail around her apartment, hoping for inspiration. Grinning as she spotted the spice rack next to her toaster through the kitchen doorway, Anne crossed to the kitchen and retrieved cinnamon from the rack and vanilla extract from the cabinet above it. Grabbing a small pot from the drying rack next to the sink, Anne ran just a splash of water in it, then poured quite a bit of vanilla into it and added a few hefty dashes of powdered cinnamon as she put the pot on the stove and turned the burner on full. Grabbing a lighter from the drawer under the microwave, Anne went back to the living room and lit the two candles that were farthest apart, letting them burn for a moment to allow a pool of wax to form at the top before blowing them out again. After extinguishing each candle she added a pinch of cinnamon and dripped a single drop of vanilla extract from her fingertip into the molten wax, then relit the candles to allow the scents to subtly permeate the apartment. She blotted the excess vanilla off her finger behind the corners of her jaw, thankful she had not yet put on any of her usual citrus scents that day.

Opening the balcony door as the flavored pot on the stove began to boil, Anne allowed the scent to diffuse throughout the room on the cross draft. She didn't want her new vanilla/cinnamon scent to smell overpoweringly fresh; she wanted it to seem as if that was how her apartment smelled in general. After letting the concoction boil for a few minutes, Anne turned off the stove and quickly rinsed out the pot, returning it to the drying rack and replacing the other kitchen items where they belonged. Checking the time and setting the alarm on the microwave to go off at 1:45, when Jesse would only be leaving the Majestic and well before he would arrive, Anne then sat down at the table to close her eyes and meditate in preparation while her apartment aired out.

"How can I possibly have seven New Mutants in Haven, four of them with me in the medical lab, and I still don't have enough hands!?" Eve huffed as she tried to correlate the scans that the examination table was doing on Jamie with results of the Hot Seat's genetic scan she had just performed. That much would be easy, what the systems were designed to do, but she was also trying to compare them with Jamie's previous scans from the record computer, and have the medical computer analyze all of their results with the Molecular portion of the New Mutant database, trying to find something to compare Jamie's evolutionary growth spurt with.

"Ummmm, because I'm the patient on the table, instead of helping you on the computer?" Jamie asked with a smile.

"I'm just moral support," Owen answered, glancing at Jamie as he grinned. "Or Test Subject B, if you want to compare my growth spurt, too."

"I think you guys are Subjects C and D," Jesse contradicted, his grin audible as humor in his voice, giving Jamie's grinning face a wink, a Molecular conspiracy. "Lexa and I are subjects A and B," he laughed. He had joined Owen and Jamie in the medical lab, hoping that his fellow Molecular's evolutionary phase would be quickly resolved. Jesse knew how difficult adjusting to evolving Molecular abilities was, especially when they shifted to affecting the surrounding environment, not just the Molecular themself. Lexa had joined them because her condition was the most critical, hoping any breakthroughs Eve made with Jamie might lead her brilliant mind into making some connection with Jesse's genetics, possibly helping to figure out Adam's work and the answer to Lexa's own condition. She and Jesse were seated on the counter on the far side of the medical lab, near the supply cabinets and the records computer.

"You already set up the records computer, but I'm next to it," Lexa called out helpfully, a smirk to match Jesse's clear in her voice, her eyes bright with amusement.

"You're all so helpful," Eve muttered with a frown that was hiding her own grin, doing her best to channel Chris' sarcasm and Lexa's usual dry mockery. Lexa's smirk spread to a grin of her own, amused by Eve's response. "All right, this is going to take a minute to process everything I'm throwing at it, so you lot can play 'fetch'. Owen, run upstairs and grab as many spare wheels from my cars as you can carry..." Eve paused as she dug in one pocket of her labcoat, realizing that Owen could carry all of her cars' spares if they were stacked, probably all of their wheels in total if they were strung on a barbell. "Actually, Jamie, go with to get the doors," she continued, tossing her keyring in the general direction of the examination table, laughing when Jamie flung one elasticized arm out to grab them out of mid-air, and Owen's larger hand clamped around both Jamie's and the keys before they could hit him.

"You can open the doors, Jamie, but you are not to pick up or hold any wheels, understood?" Eve said with a warning tone to her voice, giving Jamie a stern look to ensure he knew she was serious. She knew her tone would be enough to make Owen enforce the order anyway. "Your leg's healing, but you're not up to carrying things yet. You don't want to set it back again, limping around on it right after you were hurt was too much as it was," she finished.

"The rest of you, raid Haven's storerooms, get Chris and Shal or Brennan to help. I want some lumber: a few of those two-by-fours and a sheet of plywood from the back storeroom should do. Oh, and bring the roll of stretch-wrap, that'll work. Umm, oh! One or two of those cinderblocks, too. Maybe a sheet of drywall? That's all gypsum, uniform consistency..." she trailed off, eyes lost in the distance as she contemplated her research strategies.

"Um, Eve, what are we building in the medical lab, and what does it have to do with testing Jamie or Chris' growth spurts?" Lexa asked with a confused frown. Eve blinked her way back from her thoughts to find everyone in the medical lab staring at her. She blinked again, in confusion, then laughed when she realized how her requests had sounded.

"Oh, no!" she snickered. "..We're not building anything; I just want a variety of substances of various masses to test Jamie's new capabilities on," she explained, still grinning as she went back to cross-correlating Jamie's latest scan results. "Go on, this won't take that long, then we'll get to the fun part of seeing what Jamie can really do. Who knows, maybe we'll even get lucky and find a breakthrough somewhere."

"How long's that gonna take, though?" Jamie asked, pouting as he flipped through Eve's keys to find the door key to her PT Cruiser. He knew it was closest to the parking garage's elevator without thinking about it because his photographic memory had absorbed the layout of Eve's parking spaces ages ago. "You didn't let me have any breakfast 'cause we're doing medical stuff. I'm starving. If testing my elasticizing things makes me tired again, you'll be adding 'cranky' to the list, and my payback will be. . .creative," Jamie promised, still pouting as he found the key he was looking for and looked up to frown at Eve.

"Oh, Gah, you're right. We'll go to lunch right after, but you should probably have some sustenance in you to draw on before we start testing. Adjusting to the new genetic sequences should make you tired and hungry; we don't need to exacerbate either condition. Okay, everybody take five and grab a snack if you don't want to wait until lunch at Eloy's; I'll take my time here and get the rest of this set up," Eve declared, shooing everyone out of the medical lab with one hand while she kept typing with the other. "Jesse, your cab will be here soon, so grab anything you want to take with you or a bite to eat now, and Anne will bring you to the diner with her," she finished, pausing in her typing to look up and meet Jesse's eyes and give him an encouraging nod. "Good Luck."

"Okay, Food Time!" Owen declared as he stepped up to Jamie's examination table, grabbing the younger man and throwing Jamie over his shoulder as Jamie sat up. "Super-sleep is my new power, copycat, so you get to eat instead, figure out what you're supposed to do." Jamie squawked, knowing Owen was just keeping Jamie from using his leg unnecessarily or burning any energy before he had to, but Jamie protested being treated like a piece of luggage or something.

"Hey, right-side up, at least!" Jamie hollered into the small of Owen's back. Owen merely snickered, putting his left hand over the back of Jamie's left knee, to make sure he didn't kick or flail with his injured leg and re-damage it that way. Jamie swatted at Owen's ass, which was only a few inches "above" his head, but Owen did not deign to acknowledge it, simply smirking –which Jamie couldn't see, though Lexa snickered– and continued on out of the medical lab and towards Haven's kitchen.

Jamie frowned for a moment, upside-down against Owen's back, then grinned with an idea. He grabbed his right hand with his left and extended his left arm as far away from his head (and Owen's ass) as he could, elasticizing his right arm from the forearm down. He used the muscles of his shoulder and upper arm to extend his right arm the opposite direction, then let go of his right hand and returned his right forearm to normal at the same time. As the bones and muscles of his right arm resolidified, Jamie directed its motion into another smack to the left side of Owen's ass, this time with elastic momentum behind it.

"YOW!" Owen cried in startled surprise, twitching violently in mid-step and nearly dropping Jamie despite his two-handed grip. "That was a dumb idea," Owen warned Jamie as he raised his right hand and Jamie snickered into Owen's back. "FREE SPANKINGS!" Owen called out to Haven in general, bringing his own enormous hand down onto the right side of Jamie's ass.

Jamie's rear end merely compressed elastically into Owen's right shoulder.

"What good are those?" Lexa smirked as Jamie laughed into Owen's back. "He's made of rubber." Jamie continued laughing as he thrust a thumbs-up in the direction of Lexa's voice.

Anne opened her eyes when the intercom at her front door buzzed.

Jesse's here already!? she frowned to herself, glancing at the clock and seeing it was indeed nearly one o'clock. I swear I just turned the microwave alarm off and closed the balcony door only a minute ago... she sighed to herself as she crossed the apartment to her front door.

"Yes?" she answered as she pressed the intercom button, knowing her voice would be only vaguely recognizable at best through the building's wiring and cheap speaker.

'Anne? It's Jesse,' his scratchy voice replied.

"Apartment 6B, come on up," she confirmed, then closed her eyes and bent to lean her head against the door as she pressed the buzzer. Anne allowed her panic to wash through her, riding it out so that she could suppress it without noticeable effect while Jesse was in her apartment. It's no different than spending lunch with him at the diner; you know the place isn't recognizable, he's never been here before, so You Can Do This! she told herself firmly.

The only problem with lying to yourself is that you always know you're lying.

A few moments later, there was a knock at Anne's door.

She contemplated backing up and then calling Jesse to 'Come In!', then realized that she had no idea what to be doing with herself, what activity Jesse might be expecting her to be engaged in as he entered. She had a brief moment of panic, then told herself she was being ridiculous and should just answer the door, let Jesse's needs and emotions guide her actions. Which is what she was supposed to be doing anyway.

Sighing, Anne plastered a professional smile on her face and opened the door.

"Jesse. Come in," she told him, stepping back and holding the door open for him.

"Hi, Anne," Jesse replied, smiling slightly, but it was a distracted smile that was only being performed for politeness' sake, no more realistic than Anne's own. Anne could sense Jesse's distraction and knew that it was an emotional trick he was using to hide from his real emotional status, focusing on whatever thought or thoughts he had managed to distract himself with instead of allowing whatever emotional turmoil he was feeling to hold his attention and overwhelm him. Anne was an extraordinarily powerful empath and could tell that Jesse was hiding from anxiety, guilt, and fear. She was fairly certain the fear was for others and that his guilt was misplaced, that he was blaming himself for something he hadn't had any control over, like survivor's guilt. Not for the first time, Anne wished she was a true telepath instead of an empath; it would make getting to the answers behind people's problems so much easier. On the other hand, she knew how Jesse's mind worked, better than anyone else's really, so she would get to the bottom of things soon enough.

She just hoped 'soon enough' was before it was 'too late', for her.

"Okay, Jesse, Eve said the gang is having a late lunch at the diner, so I'll drop you off there when we're done," she told him as she led the way into the middle of her apartment's living area, between the tiny dining table and the couch and easy chair on its other side. "We can chat at the table," she said as she lifted one hand in its direction, "Even if you don't want to eat anything, or on the couch and chair, if you'd prefer space," she finished, raising her other hand toward the white couch and easy chair. She already knew which answer he would pick, but she also knew giving Jesse the choice would reassure him and give him a greater sense of control over the situation, making it easier for him to relax.

"Oh, the couch, definitely," Jesse chuckled, only slightly nervously, and turned toward the couch and its few splashes of light color. "Do I need to lie down?" he asked with a slight smile, trying to hide his nerves behind less-than-subtle humor.

Anne laughed aloud in response, her own nerves making the laughter slightly more intense than she had meant for it to be.

"Only if you want to, but please take your shoes off if you do," she told him with a smile as she moved to the easy chair, plucking up the wrapped pillow as she sat. She considered keeping it in her lap for just a moment, to give her nervous hands something to occupy them, but she realized that would only reveal the deception of the sheer cloth wrapped around the pillow. Not wanting to call Jesse's attention to one detail that might make him realize many had been modified, Anne tucked the little pillow against the chair's side, instead. She would just have to force her hands to be still.

Anne waited while Jesse situated himself on the couch, then nearly snickered at the blank-yet-traumatized look on his face. Her own self-control must have been slipping, because he noticed, frowning slightly and twitching an eyebrow, not quite raising it. Anne clamped down on her reactions, berating herself even as she allowed her amused smile to spread on her face. This is exactly why you spent the last twenty minutes meditating, to NOT slip up like that!! she yelled at herself, even as she spoke to Jesse:

"You've got total 'deer-in-headlights' look, Jesse." Anne chuckled at him. "I've got this horrible urge to yell 'BOO!' really loud!" she told him, laughter shining in her eyes. "I don't bite, honest. I'm your friend, and I'm here to help, to listen. I'm not going to judge you, and anything you tell me is absolutely confidential and held in the strictest confidence. You can tell me anything you want, and I won't repeat it to another soul, unless you give me permission," she told him, settling herself and relaxing a bit as she slid into the familiar routine of her counselor persona. Jesse himself relaxed slightly, his shoulders hunching less as he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and some of the tension leaving his face.

It was a fine assembly of New Mutants.

Reciting a few bits of personal history that Chaplain would reveal to him when they were drinking the next night quickly made John Bishop Chaplain's new best friend, and comparing what they each knew of Mutant X enabled them to quickly form a plan, a plan Chaplain had every confidence in, and of course Bishop knew it would work. His plan would work flawlessly; so he had seen, so it shall be.

And Chaplain's rogue New Mutant GSAgents combined well with Bishop's remaining Links. They would send Chaplain's Agents to perform the initial reconnoitering of Mutant X's safehouse and capabilities, since they were a known quality that was already aware of the safehouse's presence. Their attack would of course cause alarm, but it would not engender additional suspicion. This would allow the "real" assault by their combined forces to catch Mutant X by surprise and enable them to reach their true objective.

Pendleton, Chaplain's superspeed Propulsive Molecular, was out of action from her injuries then, but that was acceptable.
Raygoza was also still injured but insisted he could act; this had been factored into the plan.

Nakamoto, the Thermal Elemental, and Fulfer, the Frost Molecular, were ready to go and eager for vengeance.

Charles, the Canine Feral, was also eager to face Mutant X again, to get his revenge on their Sonic Elemental.

He and Erra, the redheaded Feline Feral, would work well with Tonio, the Links' Lupine Feral.
The rest of the Links would also serve their parts.

Franklin, a Frictionless/Adhesive Molecular, and Malcolm, a Mineral Molecular, would counter some of Mutant X well.

Shauna's Elemental abilities would counter Brennan Mulwray's perfectly; Bishop looked forward to that.

And Janessa was an even more impressive Feral than the Guardian; she ought to handle the lovely Shalimar nicely.

Davis and he would miss the fight, but what a lovely time it would be on that day. Wait. Time? What day?

"What day is it? No, it's today, what time is it? Nearly three? Ah. They'll be on the move. Time to make ours."

John Bishop grinned, and Chaplain returned it as their forces left their lair.

"Huh. Wouldn't you think it would do something different?" Owen was asking as Josh and Kevin entered the medical lab.

"Well, maybe if it were an elastic substance that had exactly the same tensile modulous as Jamie's power would apply to it, then there might be some kind of resistance, but I'm pretty sure simply nothing at all would happen," Eve replied.

"If the tensility already matched, Jamie wouldn't be changing anything," Chris nodded with a smile, pleased that he had understood Eve's explanation.

"Exactly," Eve said, giving Chris a proud smile because he had studied molecular sciences with her to understand the effects of his own powers. "And besides, I don't think you actually apply the same modulous to everything you render elastic," Eve told Jamie. "I can't be sure yet, but these initial test results sure don't indicate such." Jamie nodded his understanding, even as he turned to Owen.

"So, what, you thought I should make rubber hard instead of elastic, or something?" he asked Owen with a laugh. "Or feedback to me or something? Rubber should make me hard, instead?"

Having almost no idea what they were talking about, Josh snickered at the idea of 'Owen wanting rubber to make Jamie hard.' Kevin rolled his eyes and lightly rammed an elbow into Josh's ribs, even though his smirk indicated he had been thinking the same thing.

"It's almost three; you said we were going to do a late lunch at Eloy's," Josh announced to Eve, before Owen could respond to Jamie and start another tangential conversation. Owen gave Josh and Kevin a glance, smirking in thanks that their arrival had saved him from digging his hole any deeper. Kevin gave him a single nod of 'no biggie' acknowledgment, and Josh winked at him, his own smirk suggesting he still found Owen's hole-digging amusing, even if he was misinterpreting it. Owen pursed his lips at Josh in slight irritation, refusing to blush; Josh just grinned back.

"Yay, Lunchtime!" Jamie enthused. "Or early dinner, whatever. I'm still hungry, and bored. It's not making me as tired today, but elasticizing this stuff and that stuff and some other stuff and then even more stuff on top kinda lost its appeal a while ago, y'know?" he grinned, turning to give Eve a wink of 'no hard feelings.' Eve rolled her eyes but smiled as she turned to initiate the comparisons between Jamie's earlier scans and the current results of actively using his new ability.

"I'm so bored, I've been reciting internet jokes to myself in my head," Jamie declared, turning back to Josh and Kevin. "Here, you guys'll like this one: What do you call a lesbian dinosaur?"

Josh frowned and raised one eyebrow simultaneosly, already thinking about it too hard.

"I don't know, Jamie, what do you call a lesbian dinosaur?" Kevin replied, playing up to the joke.

"A Lickalottapus, of course," Jamie replied, his smirk spreading into a grin.

Kevin chuckled and shook his head, Chris bellowed laughter, and Josh blinked before snickering. Lexa smirked, Owen blinked and tried to stifle a laugh as he blushed faintly, but Eve merely frowned at her computer screen, already distracted by something and tuning out everything else.

"What do you call a gay dinosaur?" Jamie asked, grinning hugely.

"I don't know, Jamie, what do you call a gay dinosaur?" Josh and Kevin replied in sync, both smirking as Lexa chuckled and Chris clamped both hands over his mouth, his eyes wide with laughter as the answer occurred to him.

"A Megasaur-ass!" Jamie declared, pronouncing it "sore-ass" instead of "saurus", then cracked up as Lexa and Kevin barked laughter. Chris uncovered his mouth to guffaw, Owen blushed harder, and Josh frowned.

"Aw, but what if he's a top?" Josh asked, then laughed and ducked away when Kevin turned to smack him for being a smartass wet blanket and Jamie kicked at him from six feet away with an elasticized leg. His uninjured right leg, Owen noted with approval. Lexa rolled her eyes at Josh, but Eve only raised an eyebrow, still not paying any attention to anything but her screen.

"But that doesn't make any sense!" she hollered, frowning at the screen and only blinking back to awareness of the rest of the medical lab when she realized it had gone dead silent as everyone stared at her.

Josh opened his mouth to sarcastically explain his sarcasm, but he closed it without speaking when Kevin backhanded him in the chest and shot him a dirty look.

"What doesn't, Eve?" Lexa asked, ignoring the byplay and silliness in the room, which was conveniently all the males in it.

"These results!" Eve scowled, clicking open a few more windows and starting to network everything all over again. "Oh, dammit, I'm going to have to start over at the beginning; this sucks!" she declared, clearly frustrated and nearly despondent. "Sorry, guys, either I've misunderstood this entirely, or Jamie's genetic code is rewriting itself as he elasticizes things. There's no way I can quit in the middle of this, not until I find some answers. . .you all go on to Eloy's without me, just tell him to put it on my tab," she sighed, her eyes never leaving her computer screen.

"Umm, should I really go?" Jamie asked uncertainly, glancing at Kevin, who could only shrug in response. "I mean, actively mutating every time I use my new power? That can't be right or good, can it?" he finished, sharing a worried frown with Owen.

"What?" Eve asked, blinking in surprise and turning to face Jamie as his question registered. "No, I mean, that can't possibly be right at all; you've had this new ability for at least a few days now, used it several times. . .if you were mutating with its use, we would have noticed by now, and your scans when we started today matched the one I did the day before yesterday, after the fight at the safehouse," she explained. "Unless your genetics are shifting as you use your power and snap back into place afterward just like the objects do, and that's just flat impossible. They wouldn't be genetic codes anymore, if they changed shape."

"Impossible like Jamie's nervous and circulatory systems functioning while he's stretching?" Kevin asked, smirking as Josh's face broke out in a broad grin.

Eve paused, blinking with a confused expression on her face, as she considered.

"More impossible than that, but I suppose it's a place to start," she sighed, shaking her head. "Anyway, I'm still going to be tied up here, sorry. Jamie, why don't you hop on the chair and I'll take one more full scan just to be sure, while Owen gets the car and Lexa gets Brennan and Shal, okay?" Eve asked, looking around the lab to make sure everyone was in agreement with the plan and division of duties. "Oh, and don't go elasticizing anything until we've got some answers, of course," she finished. Jamie shrugged, taking Owen's hand to slide off the examination table onto his good foot, then literally hopped over to the Hot Seat, making Owen and Josh snicker. Owen grabbed Eve's keyring from where she had set it down next to the computer and flipped through them for the Range Rover's key, shaking his head as he left the lab. Lexa shrugged and went to retrieve their last two teammates as Jamie closed his eyes and Eve started up the yellow scanning beam of the Hot Seat.

Halfway across Los Angeles, Francis Chaplain, his rogue New Mutant GSAgents, and Bishop's Links were watching Eloy's Diner.

A short while later, John Bishop and his accomplice Davis were lurking outside a heavily secured set of doors. Davis, a Telecyber Psionic, reached for the control pad, his eyes beginning to shine with a pale yellow light.

"No," Bishop said sharply even as Davis began to move, then reached out to grasp Davis' wrist and pull it away from the door's controls while Davis was turning to question him.

Bishop's eyes went disturbingly black from lid to lid as he touched Davis' wrist and Davis gasped.

"Doctor deceived, but thinking fast. False fox's work, done to last.
Into the oasis, not to leave. Life's purpose done, the task complete."

Davis stared at Bishop for a moment as the Precognitive released his wrist and blinked his eyes back to normal, then the younger Psionic grinned.

"Do this job and retire to an oasis, huh?" Davis smiled. "Sounds good to me, about time we got a payoff for all our work. But why can't I open the doors to 'deceive the doctor'?"

"No, you can't open them without alerting her," Bishop said, shaking his head.

"How can you precognitively know that unless we do alert her?" Davis asked with a confused frown.

"You tell me so in just a minute," Bishop replied, nodding his head of disarrayed black hair at the control panel. Still frowning, Davis turned back to the doors and held his hand up once more, only scanning the doors' electronics instead of interfacing with them.

"Whoa, you're right!" Davis exclaimed with surprise, blinking at the complexity of the door's circuits. "There's redundancies on the redundancies of this thing. I can do subtle, but even I couldn't circumvent all of them, not without alerting the operato—Oh, damn," Davis cut himself off as he realized he had just done exactly what Bishop had said, telling him about the alarm. He turned to frown in amazement at Bishop; Bishop merely grinned back, with a mad glint in his eyes.

"Now, this is how we're going to do what we've done..."

Eve was still frowning at the medical computer after the rest of the team had left, glowering as she waited for another cycle of broad-spectrum comparative analyses to complete itself. She was relatively certain that Jamie's new ability was effectively like a new muscle. . .he had to exercise it to build its strength up, and the process was tiring, even though it would make the ability even stronger in the end. Which was a fine working theory and all, and the evidence her scans and monitoring Jamie's systems as he rendered various amounts of various substances elastic supported her hypothesis—but none of that explained why his genetic code would be different while he was using the new ability, and only then.

The genetic instability of New Mutants was a fact of life, a condition every New Mutant had been dealing with for however many decades they had been alive. It was a fact Eve was desperately working to change, since that instability would eventually kill every New Mutant but Jesse. Adam had somehow managed to stabilize Jesse's genetic code, but Eve needed to figure out how to duplicate the process before Lexa's instability killed her. She was already on treatments to keep her nervous system from breaking down; Eve wasn't sure how much longer Lexa would last if another system began deteriorating, if she could keep more than one stable without putting Lexa's strained system under more additional stress than it could handle.

Eve needed to figure out what Adam had done to Jesse and how to apply the same technique to Lexa, or Adam needed to make contact with the team so they could retrieve him and he could do it himself. She had been hoping that understanding Jamie's evolutionary growth spurt might give her insight into Jesse's stability, since they were both Moleculars. She hadn't been able to determine what Adam had done to Jesse, since his records had been lost with Sanctuary, so she was hoping for insight from another direction, to reverse-engineer the process once she had discovered which portion of Jesse's genetic codes had been modified.

Unfortunately, Eve had yet to make that initial discovery, to find the loose thread that would enable her to unravel the problem.

Her theory was still sound; understanding Jamie's genetic changes might still well lead her to discovering and understanding Jesse's. . .but she couldn't make heads or tails out of Jamie's. There was no reason for his codes to be reacting as they were. Until she could figure that much out, Eve was simply staring at another mystery, not an answer to any of the problems she was facing.

Sighing, Eve was suddenly surprised and looked up when an alert tone sounded from the computer.

It was effectively the doorbell; someone had pressed the alert button on Haven's main doors. It was a system that was almost never used, since the only visitors Haven had who didn't live or work there were Eloy and Anne, and they usually called when they parked in the parking garage overhead. Not only that, but both the parking garage elevator and the Majestic's elevator would alert Haven when the key-switch to Haven's access tunnel was activated. Neither elevator had descended to Haven's tunnel, so Eve had no idea who was at their door nor how they had gotten there.

Quickly bringing up the security system on the medical computer, Eve switched over to the camera feed from above the main door.

She gasped in alarm to see Ketch, the Vulpine Feral who served as the day cook at Eloy's Diner, beaten and bloodied outside Haven's door, clutching his ribs with one arm and awkwardly jabbing at Haven's buzzer with the other. His right eye was nearly swollen shut, his face and neck visibly bruised, and his nose and one corner of his mouth had trickles of blood coming from them. Ketch was also standing awkwardly, leaning against the panel that the entry keypad and intercom were built into, as if it was more than just one side of his ribs that was hurting him.

"Ketch, my god, what happened?!" Eve asked as she jabbed open the intercom line, watching Ketch's image jump on the monitor when he heard her voice.

'Please!' Ketch gasped out, desperate. 'Eve, Please, Let Me In!' he cried, fresh tears rolling down Ketch's face as he glanced around the corridor, his eyes bright orange and ears visibly twitching as he kept alert. 'Ogod, Eve, I think they might have followed me, killed Stacy, I climbed down the garage elevator's service ladder...'

Eve had already triggered the cycle on Haven's door and was sprinting out of the medical lab and across Haven's main expanse as the security locks disengaged to admit Ketch.

Across town at Eloy's Diner, the rest of Mutant X was just arriving. The miniature cowbell over the door made its two-tone jingle as Brennan pushed the door open, and Stacy looked up from behind the counter, beaming to see him.

"Hi, Brennan! Hi, Gang, the corner booth's open, if you want to squeeze in?" she asked, perky as always, but her upbeat waitress persona hid a clever mind. She mouthed a silent 'Thank You!' to Josh when she met his eyes, grateful for Mutant X rescuing her at the safehouse two days earlier, Josh having been the team member she had actually spoken to.

"Hi, Guys," Eloy called out amiably as he exited the back office, having felt the modified cellphones of the Californian members and the original team's commrings approaching the diner with his Telecyber abilities. "No Eve or Jesse today?" he asked, his dark Inuit head tipping to one side in curiosity.

"Jamie did Something Weird and broke her computer, so she had to stay behind to fix it," Chris explained with a grin, knowing Jamie would object. "And Jesse's at Anne's; she'll drop him off with us when she comes in."

"I did not!" Jamie protested. "I can't help it if I'm too complicated for her silly computer to keep up with!" he pouted. Eloy laughed, knowing more-or-less what they were talking about even if they couldn't discuss things openly in the public portion of his diner. Eloy hadn't known about New Mutant Growth Spurts any more than Eve had, so he and the other operators of the Californian Mutant Underground had been informed, to let them keep an eye out for any local New Mutants suffering similar difficulties.

"Well, give her a call, ask what she wants for dinner, and I'll send it home with you guys," Eloy told Chris, his midnight blue eyes amused at the group's byplay.

"Dude, I knew you were a weirdo and a tech-geek, but if you broke Eve's computer without even trying, you're too much of a weirdo!" Ketch called out to Jamie from the grill, behind the counter. Jamie pouted for a moment, glancing over the counter, then grabbed a packet of ketchup from the tiny basket next to the cash register and threw it at the back of Ketch's head. Ketch's ears twitched slightly at the sound of Jamie's movement, and his left hand flashed up over the top of his head, swinging the hand towel he was using as a potholder to swat the packet out of the air before it could hit him.

"Show off," Jamie sulked, making Owen snicker from behind him as he waited for Jamie to follow Lexa and the others to the back booth. Stacy giggled heartily while Ketch grinned, and Chris shook his head in amusement as he followed the rest of his team, thumbing the first speed-dial on his phone.

'Speak to me,' Eve's voice responded after her phone rang three times. Chris' face creased in a frown for a split second as he reached the corner booth, but smoothed into normalcy as he slid onto the bench seat next to Shalimar.

"Eve, Eloy wants to know what you want for lunch, since you couldn't make it; he'll send it back with us. Ketch blames Jamie for your not being able to make it, says that makes him too much of a weirdo, and Stacy thinks it's all hilarious, for some reason."

'Oh, dinner when you guys get back. . .my usual chef's salad would wilt. You know I'm busy here; just bring me a bowl of whatever soup is good today and save me some kind of bread,' she replied.

"I gotcha, Eve," Chris answered, making sure to speak with a vocal inflection that sounded perfectly normal but not at all like his own. The Ferals at the table, Kevin, and Jamie all turned to look at Chris in surprise, having noticed the difference. "We'll be back at the usual time. And Nick's here, says 'hello'," Chris finished, frowning intently and raising a hand, nullifying the sound of Brennan asking who Nick was.

'Okay, tell Nick "Hi" for me too, and I'll see you all then,' Eve replied, still sounding perfectly normal.

"Sure thing. Bye, Eve," Chris finished, waiting for Eve's farewell before ending the call.

"Shit. Eve's in trouble," Chris declared as he dropped his phone on the table, rubbing one hand over his face in worry even as he used his power to keep his words from being heard outside of their booth.

The rest of the table responded with variations of the question "What!?" and expressions of alarm.

"How can you be sure? And who's Nick?" Lexa asked.

"Our 'usual time'," Chris answered with a sigh. "As in: the Nick of. Eve's being held at gunpoint, or Elemental fingerpoint or whatever," he said, motioning for Josh and Kevin to slide out of the booth before him, glancing across the table at Brennan and Lexa to urge them into motion as well. "She said 'Speak to me,' when she answered, not 'Talk', like she normally does. You all heard me tell her I got it, then I fed her the Nick line, and she responded in kind without missing a beat: 'Tell Nick "Hi" for me too.' She didn't question who I meant, nothing. She's got someone standing over her shoulder, making sure she doesn't act up," Chris explained as the group finished filing out of the booth and hurried for the door.

"Emergency?" Eloy asked with a worried frown as they rushed by, recognizing their urgency.

"Of course," Josh muttered as he reached the door, Kevin smirking at the unfortunate fact he was right.

"You and your freaky-luck timing," Kevin told him as the group hurried to the parking lot. "We miss more meals this way..."

As the eight of them were reaching Eve's Range Rover and Josh's Sunfire, Shalimar's eyes flashed into their golden Feral mode and her head snapped up to the sky above them.

"GET DOWN!!" she shouted, whirling to grab Jamie even as she yelled and leaping away with him, because he couldn't move fast enough on his own and she worried Owen wouldn't be quick enough to both pick Jamie up and get away in time. The rest of the team instinctively ducked or leaped away, just as a ton or so of weight smashed into Eve's Range Rover from above.

Eve ran up to Haven's doors as they were opening, then screeched to a halt and gasped in surprise to see not Ketch, but two New Mutants she had never seen before entering Haven. The older one was short, with disheveled black hair and manic eyes, not to mention a Psionic starburst hovering before his forehead. The younger New Mutant was also not too tall but of muscular build, with light brown hair and a superior smirk. Eve couldn't tell what color his eyes were, because they were shining with a pale yellow light.

"No sudden moves, please, Dr. Aybel," the darker one called out, raising a cautionary hand. "I would only have to subdue you," he warned, raising the hand higher to tap his temple, near the readied psi-bolt. "And that would delay our chat. Time is indeed relative, oh yes indeed, but we're on a schedule nonetheless."

"Who are you?" Eve asked, not bothering to inquire how he knew her name. He could have simply pulled it from her head, for all she knew. "What do you want with me, besides to 'chat'?" she asked, raising an unimpressed eyebrow even as she –slowly– folded her arms across her chest.

"No no, a chat is really all I want with you, my dear," the intruder replied, gazing curiously around Haven's main expanse, even as his eyes seemed to skate unseeingly around him at the same time. "My name is John, by the way. John Bishop, and my associate here just goes by Davis." Bishop grinned, a baring of teeth that was both amused as well as threatening. "He's a bit excitable." Davis' smirk spread into a disturbing grin of his own. "I don't recommend exciting him."

"Alright," Eve agreed cautiously, still frowning as she considered her rather limited options. "What did you want to talk abou—" Eve cut herself off as her cellphone rang in the pocket of her labcoat, glancing down at it before raising her eyes back to Bishop, her expression questioning what he would like her to do about it.

"That's a member of my team. They'll be suspicious if I don't answer," she told them as the phone rang again.

"Answer, and behave normally," Bishop told her. "I'll know if you attempt to request help, and Davis might make your phone explode in your face," he finished with a smile as the phone rang a third time. Bishop was enjoying pretending to be an empath instead of a precognitive; knowing what his "opponent" would do making it seem as if he could interpret their intentions was amusing.

Plucking her phone from her pocket and noting that it was Chris calling, Eve's brilliant mind came up with an idea to inform him she was in trouble. Although she was maintaining a calm exterior, Eve was of course alarmed by being attacked in the security of Haven, which would naturally make her feel upset and rebellious regarding her captors whether she was willing to risk acting on those feelings or not, so she wasn't concerned that Bishop might sense her plan if he was empathic. If he was a telepath and actively monitoring her thoughts, there was nothing she could do to stop him, but she could no more combat a Psionic mentally than she could keep herself from trying to escape or defeat them, so Eve chose not to worry about it and simply deal with the situation as it unfolded. On the other hand, if Davis blew up her phone, Chris would certainly become aware that something was wrong, so Eve considered that particular threat a bluff she was willing to call.

These thoughts took only an instant to flash across Eve's quick-thinking mind, her plan formulated and commitment to it resolved even as she accepted the incoming call.

"Speak to me," Eve told Chris, certain that he would pick up on her choice of words. She was confident that he knew her normal method of operation more than well enough to notice, meaning that she wasn't overly nervous or hopeful about this particular interaction with him, thus providing no empathic cues for her captors to notice. Eve had a mild worry that her lack of reaction might seem odd to an empath, but on the other hand, worry that she might fail to maintain the image of normalcy and be attacked was a perfectly legit emotional response, which might make it all good enough anyway.

'Eve, Eloy wants to know what you want for lunch, since you couldn't make it; he'll send it back with us. Ketch blames Jamie for your not being able to make it, says that makes him too much of a weirdo, and Stacy thinks it's all hilarious, for some reason,' Chris told her. Had there been the slightest pause before he replied, because he had indeed noticed her phrasing?

"Oh, dinner when you guys get back. . .my usual chef's salad would wilt. You know I'm busy here; just bring me a bowl of whatever soup is good today and save me some kind of bread," Eve answered, keeping her response normal. . .except for the fact that she would normally either pick something specific, or hem and haw about it and ask for the staff's recommendations of the day for her to choose from, which Chris would also know.

'I gotcha, Eve,' Chris answered, an ordinary reply except for the fact he wasn't using his normal speech rhythms. 'We'll be back at the usual time. And Nick's here, says "hello",' Chris finished nonchalantly.

"Okay, tell Nick 'Hi' for me too, and I'll see you all then," Eve replied without missing a beat. None of the regulars at Eloy's Diner were named Nick; Chris was making a pun on the fact that the team's "usual time" was "in the nick of"; he had definitely understood Eve's hidden meaning.

'Sure thing. Bye, Eve,' Chris responded, still sounding normal. He couldn't know what sort of threat she was under, if the line was tapped or a Feral might be overhearing the conversation, so he was using perfectly ordinary words and inflections to maintain their deception. Eve felt a fierce swell of pride and affection for him, then worried that Bishop's potential empathy might detect that as something amiss.

"Bye, Chris," she said, not allowing a trace of her new worry into her voice and trying to keep it contained within her own mind as she ended the call.

Eve looked up as she slipped her phone back into her pocket, deciding that she needed to add a feature to the team's modified cellphones to not only leave the line open when the user pressed END, as they had done when setting up the lead GSAgent Feldspar, but to send a signal to the other phone to maintain the line even when it wasn't prearranged, as she had done previously with Kevin's. If the line had remained open, Chris could have used his powers to overhear her "chat" with Bishop, which could only aid the team's recue effort. It was definitely something to keep in mind for the next generation of phones, presuming she got through this.

Brennan, Lexa, and Owen ducked as Shalimar leaped away with Jamie and Eve's Range Rover shattered, its roof crushing into the seats and all the windows blew outwards in a hail of safety-glass shrapnel. At the opposite parking space, Josh, Kevin, and Chris had looked up in alarm at Shalimar's shout, then thrown their arms up in front of their faces when the top half of the Range Rover exploded. Kevin's eyes narrowed as he winced, but he kept them open enough to see the spray of broken glass headed their way and froze most of it with a flash of concentration and an out-thrusting of his already-raised hand. Josh's Feral reflexes enabled him to swat aside the spray's edge that had made it into Kevin's peripheral vision, even if it put a few cuts in his hand. He hissed as a fingertip was sliced back open again, but a stinging fingertip was infinitely preferable to broken glass in his eyes. Chris gave a clipped cry literally at the edge of glass bits that were headed for him, the concussive burst of sound knocking almost all of their forward momentum out of them and causing the windshield's debris to clatter to the pavement before it reached him.

The rest of the team leaped back up to their feet even as Chris shouted and Josh swore, rising at the same time their opponent did. What Shalimar had seen dropping from above turned out to be an ordinary looking man wearing average clothes and of normal appearance. . .except for the fact he was made of granite, seeming to be a statue that had come to life. Stone being far heavier than flesh and having fallen into Eve's car from who knew how far above it, it was no wonder the Range Rover had been half crushed. The man grinned as he rose from the ruin of Eve's SUV and the team was scrambling to face him, then he leaped at Owen, intending to smash the Ursine Feral with all his stone weight.

Jamie burst out laughing at the look of utter surprise on the Molecular's face when he froze in mid-air. Owen smirked as he lunged forward and grabbed their attacker's outstretched wrists.

"Up and Over, Kevin!" Owen called out as he heaved, knowing the team's resident Psionic was responsible for the attacking Molecular's being telekinetically frozen in mid-air. Over a dozen feet away, Kevin moved his hand and splayed his fingers palm-up, then flipped it over to face the ground, as he frowned in concentration. At the same time, the Molecular's body swung through the air in an arc over Owen, smashing down into the parking lot's surface with the combined strength of Owen's body and Kevin's will.

As the team spread out to surround their attacker where Owen had sprawled him across the asphalt, Chris looked up because something felt strange to him. He felt sound reverberating through the air with his natural Elemental sensitivity. . .but only with his power; he didn't hear anything unusual or as loud as the sound "felt". Slowing down, Chris paused to frown curiously at their surroundings. Checking Chris' side of the perimeter just as he was frowning in her direction, Lexa noticed his suspicion and took a closer look around, herself. She could tell Chris was concentrating on his power, scanning his surroundings with it, as he did when he magnified a distant or faint sound so that he could hear it. Reaching out with her own power, not activating her light-cloak but feeling the light that she would warp around herself if she did, Lexa immediately understood the difference that Chris did not. . .the light that was striking her was shifting rapidly, and whatever was causing those changes in the light was drawing nearer. It was why she had to move slowly with her cloak activated, rapid movement would make her outline visible to the naked eye, causing the same sort of shifting-light visual her power was currently feeling, even if she couldn't see it with her eyes. But its moving closer could only mean...

"—INCOMING HOSTILES!" Lexa shouted, turning to slap her hands together as hard as she could, pointed up above the middle of their group. An enormous strobe flared off her palms, detonating in a brilliant flash of blinding light, ten feet above their heads, even as Lexa's body flared with brilliance itself, vanishing under her light-cloak.

Lexa's strobe surprised their attackers and broke their focus, including Chaplain's illusion that there was no one present other than Mutant X and Malcolm, the Mineral Molecular. Tonio's howl of gleeful malevolence cut off in a surprised yelp of pain as his Feral eyes were momentarily blinded by Lexa's strobe, and Janessa and Erra both winced with hisses of discomfort. Charlie yelped angrily, having been prepared for Chris' sonics to assault his Feral ears and upset at his enhanced eyesight being overwhelmed instead. Fulfer and Nakamoto both winced at the wash of flaring light, but their eyes were already focused on their targets and less sensitive than Feral eyes besides. Franklin's gaze had been drawn by Lexa's sudden movement, as had Shaunna's, but she seemed little troubled by the strobe, while he flinched, blinking rapidly.

Most of Mutant X was dropping into defensive stances or readying their powers, other than Owen, who was releasing Malcolm's wrists and straightening up even as Malcolm's body shifted back to flesh. Jamie rendered himself fully elastic, making him nearly immune to physical attacks that weren't energy-based. With his photographic memory, Jamie recognized Erra, even though he had only seen the Feine Feral tussling with Josh for a few moments the night the original team had joined them. Jamie immediately looked for Nakamoto and Fulfer, knowing that either one of them could hurt him or any of his teammates with their powers, making them two of the biggest threats on the battlefield. . .unless some of the other New Mutants they hadn't faced before were even worse.

Kevin and Josh were still reacting to the sudden appearance of New Mutant attackers all around them; Kevin was only beginning to take in the details after dropping into a combat stance, and Josh had spotted Fulfer on the far side of the group. Remembering how she and her Thermal Elemental partner had almost killed him two days earlier, and laughingly enjoyed doing so, Josh was focused on Fulfer and snarling. Neither of the California team's resident couple had noticed that Nakamoto was behind them, the heat shimmer of his Elemental powers already fully gathered around his hands. He had one arm reared back, ready to blast the telekinetic who had easily beaten and humiliated him in their battle two days before.

"KEV, DUCK!!" Jamie yelled urgently, wishing he had something at hand to elastically throw at Nakamoto, or that one of the other enemy New Mutants was close enough he could hurl his hands to seize them and throw them between Kevin and Nakamoto, but all he had was his phone in his pocket and a wad of gum in hs mouth. He wasn't willing to risk the phone that Eve had replaced not even two weeks ago, and it would take too long to dig out of his pocket, besides. He was chewing at least two pieces of gum, but even a mouthful of gum wouldn't fly that far, nor was it big enough to take a whole blast. All Jamie could do was yell a warning.

Kevin took Jamie at his word, throwing himself to the ground. Unfortunately for Kevin, the light button-up shirt he was wearing fluttered up above his back as he crouched, and it caught the edge of Nakamoto's thermal energy blast. The back of Kevin's shirt burst into flame even as it was settling against his skin again, making Kevin cry out in pained surprise. Josh had whirled at Jamie's cry, looking for the imminent threat, spotting Nakamoto even as flames erupted right next to him, from his lover's body, no less.

"NO!" Josh cried out, frozen in desperation between grabbing his lover to aid him, as his emotional instincts were urging him, or backing away from uncontrolled open flame immediately beside him, as his Feral instincts were insisting. Kevin's hunched form shuddered as he completed his shaky exhalation of surprised pain, his outspread arms twitching in response even as he began to draw a new breath.

Josh realized the shock and pain had caught Kevin utterly by surprise and shattered his focus; it would take a moment for him to be able to concentrate on his shirt and telekinetically rip it away, and that was only if he could focus that much past the pain. . .Josh knew that he himself would never be able to act that rationally if he were physically on fire, and he couldn't expect his lover to, even if Kevin stood a much better chance of doing so. Josh had done some studying of fire, in an attempt to build up his tolerance of his phobia; he hadn't had much success with that, intellectual understanding of fire and its properties didn't do much to keep his instinctive responses from kicking into overdrive whenever he was confronted with flame. However, Josh's research did make him aware that open flame would cause second-degree burns in seconds or less with direct skin contact, which gave him the motivation to overcome his paralysis and lunge to Kevin's aid.

Snarling in fury that his flash of hesitation might leave his lover permanently scarred, not to mention in severe pain for a large amount of time as Kevin recovered whether he scarred or not, Josh turned to seize the shoulders of Kevin's shirt. Gripping the fabric in his fists as he clenched them, Josh then wrenched it away from Kevin's body, spreading his arms to tear the cloth apart and get it that much farther away from Kevin's skin. Josh heaved up and away from Kevin's upper back and head to keep the flames clear of Kevin's hair, cloth ripping and buttons pinging off the blacktop beneath Kevin's chest as his shirt was torn away.

Still snarling in rage, now at Kevin's attacker, Josh snapped his wrists as he whirled to face Nakamoto and dropped into a crouch. The snap of motion snuffed the flames from the remnants of Kevin's shirt, and Josh scrunched the char-edged and tattered cloth into a wad as he leaped at Nakamoto with a furious cry. The Asian man still had a heat charge around his second fist, whipping it at Josh's airborne form as it descended toward him. Josh had anticipated that response and threw Kevin's bundled shirt into the Elemental blast, intercepting it and preventing it from striking Josh. The remains of Kevin's shirt burst into flame once more, this time in a concentrated ball that burned away to ash in only a second, but Josh's far heavier form descended in a much steeper arc, coming at Nakamoto from beneath the sudden fireball. Josh's furious, jade green Feral eyes were fixed on his opponent, ignoring the flame above him as he dove upon the rogue GSAgent.

Brennan saw a number of their sudden assailants moving toward Owen and the Molecular he had slammed to the pavement, probably to aid their comrade by overwhelming Owen. Brennan thrust his arm forward, a bolt of bright blue electricity spearing off his hand and toward the rangy guy with the copper crew-cut. . .but it was intercepted by a short, pale blonde.

Shauna had been advised by both Bishop and Chaplain about Brennan's Electrical Elemental abilities, and she had smirked when she saw his intention to attack some of her Feral teammates. Even as Brennan charged up and extended his arm, she stepped forward and extended her own, putting her hand between him and her companions. Shauna's eyes began to glow with a pale magenta light, and a matching halo formed around her head and outstretched hand. The aura intensified as Brennan's electrical bolt passed Shauna's fingertips; her Elemental energy field absorbed his electricity harmlessly.

"Whoa, you're an Electrical Elemental, too?" Brennan asked with a surprised frown. "Then we're not really going to be able to hurt each other. . .with our powers," he said, raising his hands in a martial arts stance and raising an eyebrow as he looked down at her slight form.

"Well, that would be true..." Shauna allowed with a slight nod, even as she smirked. "..If I actually were an Electric Elemental."

Brennan frowned again.

"You're not but you caught my bolt! If you're not an Electrical Elemental, then what are you?" he asked, cutting himself off in mid-protest with frustration.

"Electro. Magnetic," she replied, still smirking as she swung her arm in an arc between herself and Brennan. Her hand and eyes were still glowing, and magnetic force seized every bit of metal on Brennan's person: his commring, his dogtags, his belt buckle, his pocket change, even the button and zipper of his jeans, the tiny bits of metal in his boots–—they all jerked to the side, in the direction Shauna's hand had moved. Brennan gasped in surprise as he was thrown from his feet, and he landed badly when Shauna jerked her hand upward, grinning as the sudden twist kept Brennan from being able to take the fall properly.

Like Jamie, Shalimar also recognized Erra as the redheaded Feline Feral she had knocked off a roof on the night they had arrived in California, then knocked out after Kevin prevented Josh from blinding her. Shalimar could also tell the rangy soldier-boy Charlie and the darker Tonio with his heavy facial hair were both Ferals as well, simply from the way they moved. All three were moving in tandem towards Owen and their prone teammate; she could recognize that they were operating as a pack. Moving to intercept them, or at least to pair up with Owen to oppose them with a unified front, Shalimar was cut off by Janessa. Janessa was almost six feet tall with pale hazel eyes that nearly looked topaz and three and a half feet of hair so dark a brown it almost looked black cascading down her back, all the way to her thighs.

"Wow, you've got a lot of hair," Shalimar commented idly as she kept her hands at the ready; Janessa had moved far too quickly to intercept her. The Amazonian woman was either a fourth Feral on the opposition's side, or another Propulsive Molecular. She was far too built to be the skinny one Chris had described fighting.

"Yeah," Janessa muttered disinterestedly, but there was a manic light in her eyes that said she was excited to be there. . .fixated on Shalimar. Shalimar frowned slightly with worry– —the last New Mutants she had seen with fervor in their eyes like that had been Ashlocke's Links.

"Is all that hair actually an advantage to you in a fight?" Shalimar asked skeptically, hoping to use the question as an excuse for her frown, not wanting her opponent to realize that her appearance had shaken Shalimar slightly.

"Yeah," Janessa replied again as she shifted into her Feral mode.

Her pale hazel eyes went the glossy black of a spider's from lid to lid as the massive volume of her hair was sucked back into her scalp, the keratin oozing out of her pores to form the armored carapace of a trapdoor spider over her skin. Six more tiny black eyes opened on her forehead and temples, and human-sized spider mandibles complete with fangs protruded from the corners of her mouth. The ebony exoskeleton shaped into razor-sharp talons at her fingertips, and horny extensions formed at her knees and elbows, making her look not only utterly alien, but highly dangerous as well.

"Oh, I had to go and ask for that, didn't I?" Shalimar muttered under her breath as the monstrous Arachnid Feral surged forward at her in a blur of speed.

Fulfer had originally been targeting the hot-shot Feral longhair, to take out "the one who got away", while Nakamoto had wanted to punish his Psionic boyfriend for how he had humiliated the pair of them two days ago. The stretchy kid who had been with them warned the prettyboy in the nick of time, though, and his Feral lover had leaped at Nakamoto in retaliation. Knowing how Ferals felt about fire and that Nakamoto was an accomplished martial artist as well as a Thermal Elemental, Fulfer decided to switch targets as well and take the Psionic, instead. She strode forward while he was still distracted from having his back set on fire, her dark curls bouncing with her purposeful movement as she went, the blue glow of her Molecular ability coalescing around her hands.

Lexa had activated her light-cloak when she set off her flare, vanishing from sight as it detonated and everyone was either blinking or turning their heads away. She saw Fulfer heading for Kevin, whose attention was still on his brief encounter with immolation and standing alone because Josh had leaped away and Chris had circled the other way towards Owen and the Range Rover. Lexa carefully moved to put herself not quite directly between Fulfer and Kevin, but close enough to trip Fulfer as she went by. The enemy Molecular stopped short, however, thrusting her hands forward at Kevin while he was still distracted by his back and fumbling for something in one of the cargo pockets of his khakis, before he was aware of Fulfer's approach. Lexa dropped her light-cloak and speared her own hand forward, her first two fingers extended in a "gun" position. As the blue glow of Fulfer's New Mutant ability surged forward at Kevin, Lexa fired her laser to intercept it, the intense heat of her yellow-orange laser dissipating the blue glow of Fulfer's frost matrix.

None of their opponents had been close enough for Jamie to reach when Nakamoto fired at Kevin, but one of them was headed right for him, a lean guy with sandy hair hanging in his eyes. He was smirking as he trotted toward Jamie, so Jamie threw a punch at him, elasticizing his arm to let his fist's momentum stretch his arm across the intervening distance and pop the guy in his smirking mouth. Unfortunately for Jamie, punching someone from so far away gave them plenty of time to react if they were aware of the blow coming. Franklin moved one arm in a circular motion, brushing Jamie's punch away and twisting his hand to grasp Jamie's stretched wrist as he moved. A pale green aura washed down Franklin's arm and into his hand as he hurled Jamie's fist into the ground; Jamie felt the other New Mutant's ability doing something to his arm as it came in contact with the green aura.

Jamie canceled his power as Franklin threw his fist into the ground, reverting his arm to normal and hoping that would negate whatever effect Franklin's ability had on it. Unfortunately for Jamie, however, Franklin knew what he was doing, and although Jamie's stretched arm had shortened significantly, his fist had been thrown into the ground too quickly for his arm to revert back to normal before his hand hit the surface of the parking lot. Since his arm was still partially elastic, hitting the asphalt wouldn't hurt his hand too much, but...

Franklin grinned at the look of utter shock that appeared on Jamie's face when his right fist stuck to the ground, instead of recoiling back to its normal position as his arm reverted to normal. His arm was still reverting to normal, though, and since his fist was stuck to the ground, Jamie was yanked off his feet, crashing nearly face-first into the parking lot. He gasped in surprise and rendered himself elastic, bouncing harmlessly onto the blacktop, but the curled edge of his hand was still stuck in place.

Frowning as Franklin chuckled, Jamie waited for the other Molecular to get closer. He'd never encountered an Adhesive Molecular before, but even if he could make Jamie stick to things, Franklin still couldn't hurt him, unless he adhered Jamie's nose and mouth shut, or something. Jamie shuffled his feet under himself and gripped his right wrist with his left hand, trying to pull it free. He wasn't trying very hard, actually using the movement to position the rest of his body where he wanted it relative to Franklin's approach, but he wouldn't complain if he managed to free his hand anyway. When Franklin moved a step closer, Jamie thrust his heel out behind himself, straight at Franklin and elasticizing his leg to extend its reach far enough for his foot to impact Franklin's groin. Franklin's adhesion was a Molecular effect that was maintained by his power, like Jamie's elasticity or Jesse's density control, not a reconfiguration of molecules like Fulfer's frost matrix, so Jamie figured the pain of a groin shot would break Franklin's concentration and free Jamie's hand.

Jamie hadn't counted on Franklin's reflexes or knowledge of Jamie's combat techniques, however, and Franklin managed to twist enough to take the impact on his hipbone instead of between his legs. Jamie was surprised when his hand was released from the ground anyway, but that distraction enabled Franklin to dart one hand forward and grab Jamie's stretched ankle before it elastically snapped back again. Franklin's green aura flooded into Jamie's whole body. . .rendering him entirely frictionless, whether he was elastic or not. Letting go of Jamie's leg, it snapped back into its normal shape even as Jamie was slipping on his suddenly frictionless limbs. The momentum of his leg more or less colliding with the rest of Jamie's body sent him sliding away across the parking lot, unable to stop himself because his everything only slipped against the blacktop.

Owen had heard Tonio's howl and yelp when Lexa's strobe shattered Chaplain's illusion, and he saw the three Ferals headed for him at the same time Shalimar did. Even as Janessa cut Shalimar off, Owen turned from Malcolm and leaped to intercept Erra, Tonio, and Charlie. The arc of descent from his jump was going to drop him immediately in front of Charlie; Owen had his arms spread wide, ready to seize his GSAgent rival in an Ursine Feral bear hug and crush the fight right out of him. Charlie realized it, however, and dashed a step forward and turned around, ready to strike Owen in the back as he landed, before he could spin to re-orient himself.

Unfortunately for Charlie, Owen knew he wasn't the most clever of Canine Ferals, and the positioning of his leap had been a ruse. In an impressive display of acrobatics, especially for someone who stood 6'5" and thirty-some inches across the shoulders, Owen heaved backwards with his upper body and kicked with both legs. The sudden influx of new momentum rotated him in mid-fall, facing the ground with his head oriented back the way he had come from—which was now towards Charlie. The Canine Feral took another step backward, this one surprised and trying to get out of Owen's enormous reach and ready to leap aside when Owen leaped at him after landing with his legs folded beneath him.

Charlie almost made it out of Owen's reach. . .which was exactly what Owen had intended. Instead of springing at Charlie and trying to catch him in his widespread arms, as Owen had done on both of the previous occasions they had fought, Owen merely reached forward as he landed, seizing the baggy folds of Charlie's camouflage cargo pants in his fists. Charlie was already leaping aside, not wanting to be pinned by Owen yet again, and Owen both yanked and spread his arms with all his strength as he leaped aside himself. . .ripping Charlie's pants off. The Canine Feral was wearing a tight muscle shirt, so the only place he had to conceal any gear was in his pants. Owen didn't intend to let the rangy Feral pull any sneak attacks on him this time. To Charlie's further misfortune, his pants were tucked into his calf-high combat boots, tripping him up entirely as the angle of his leap was thrown off by his pants being torn away. To add mortifying embarrassment to his predicament, Charlie had been going commando beneath his formerly intact pants, and his awkward landing crushed a few particularly sensitive bits of anatomy between his pelvic bone and the pavement under them.

Chris had been heading over to surround the guy who had smashed Eve's car along with everyone else when Lexa realized they were under attack by a group. He saw Owen leap away and pants that jerkwad Charlie, which was hilarious as well as preventing more unfortunate pepper spray incidents, but it left the Molecular unattended as everyone else split up to face the other attackers. Chris saw the guy transforming back into granite and getting to his feet, so he hurried over to slow the living statue down before he got the drop on anyone else.

Muting the sound of his dashing footsteps, Chris flung himself into a dropkick as he charged Malcolm from behind, launching both feet out to catch Malcolm behind the knees. Chris had little hope of hurting a Mineral Molecular in their transformed state by merely hitting them, but that didn't mean he couldn't knock the guy back down again. Malcolm cried out in surprise as both his knees buckled simultaneously, dropping forward to land on them and flailing his arms awkwardly as his granite knees pounded dents into the asphalt.

Slapping out of his low fall and taking the impact with his biker jacket, Chris rolled onto one knee and elbow, kicking his other foot high and as hard as he could into the side of Malcolm's head, taking care to strike with the ball of his foot and absorbing the impact with the sole of his boot. Malcolm gasped again as he toppled forward, uninjured but shocked at being knocked around in his transformed state twice in less than four seconds. He caught himself on one hand, turning to look over his shoulder.

Seeing Chris' awkward position on two joints, Malcolm simply heaved himself at Chris, flinging himself backward and hoping to crush Chris beneath his stone form as he turned. Chris hurled himself sideways, landing on his free arm and rolling away. Malcolm landed more or less on his belly again, but with his hands and knees under him this time. He scrambled up to his feet faster than Chris could from rolling lengthwise and turned to strike him before Chris could draw enough breath or focus enough to use his powers properly.

Chris lurched out of the way of Malcolm's punch, barely managed to shove his kick off target with both arms, then ducked Malcolm's follow-up punch. Chris had been forced to move fast to keep up with Malcolm's attacks, but he was an experienced brawler and easily regained focus, shifting to concentrate on his breathing in preparation to hit the Mineral Molecular with something that might actually hurt him. He blocked another quick punch, wincing as he felt his forearm bruise from smashing into a granite arm that weighed 60 pounds, but that proved his undoing. In a brawl, such a blow was nothing, easily blocked and with no decent follow up from the position Malcolm was in, facing Chris directly with his legs in no position to kick. His legs were in position to make a sudden leap forward, however, which he did. In a standard brawl, this would only lead to colliding with one's opponent, not generally the best of ideas. Being made of granite, however, Malcolm slammed into Chris and both knocked him down and knocked the wind out of him.

Blinking as she put her phone away, Eve realized Bishop was still watching her with a knowing smirk, but Davis had disappeared.

"Where—" she started to ask, beginning to turn to look for the other intruder, but Bishop was raising a warning finger even before Eve began to speak, and his Psionic starburst manifested on his forehead once more just before her eyes moved away from his face.

"Ah, ah, ah..." Bishop warned her, his finger waving back and forth to the beat of his words. "I believe I said I wanted to chat with you, and I didn't say it backward, because you questioned me on it," he said, his grin breaking out anew when Eve frowned in confusion at his mention of speaking backward. "We're going to do that now, but first we need a tarp," Bishop continued, moving past Eve and directly toward the rear storeroom. Eve's frown intensified, wondering how he knew where the storeroom was, not to mention what in the world he wanted a tarp for, but she decided she couldn't underestimate what a Psionic might know.

Bishop let himself into the rear storeroom, seeming to know exactly where he was going and what he was looking for. Given that he had known where the storeroom was in the first place, Eve didn't doubt that he did indeed know. She waited for him at the storeroom door, contemplating the collapsible fencing rapier she kept in her labcoat's other pocket. It was only the size of a large tube of lipstick, but it could be extended into a three-foot fencing sword with a flick of the wrist. Ever since a GSAgent assassin had broken into her home back in New York, Eve kept the blade on her, just in case. She was now grateful for that precaution, even in the supposed safety of Haven, but she worried about attacking Bishop if he could Psionically sense her intentions. There was also the fact that she didn't know where Davis was, nor what exactly he could do.

"I'm already well-aware of your concealed weapon, Dr. Aybel," Bishop's voice called out from within the storeroom as he returned to the door. "And your advanced fencing prowess," he continued, smirking as he came back into view. "I've gone to the trouble of getting this tarp in preparation," he said, raising the folded blue bundle in his hands slightly, to demonstrate. "Please do save it for later," he finished with another smirk, then grinned madly again as he moved past Eve, heading towards Haven's front.

"Come, Nyleve, we have our chat in your lounge. It's so cozy!" he declared with a cackle.

Eve followed the crazed Psionic, a sinking feeling growing in her chest.

Kevin finally managed to dig the tiny can of aerosol burn-treatment spray out of the thigh pocket of his pants, opposite from his mini-medical kit. Looking up quickly as Lexa reappeared in a flare of light to intercept Fulfer's attack, Kevin glanced around the battlefield to make sure no other opponents had the drop on him. Unfortunately, all of his teammates were occupied engaging the enemy New Mutants, so Kevin was going to have to take care of his burns himself, before they became a problem when any complications set in.

Dropping down to sit on the ground, Kevin pointed his back at Josh's car, using it to cover him from behind, hoping he could keep an eye on treating his back and the battle around him at the same time. Kevin leaned forward over his knees, grimacing at the pain of stretching the burned portions of his back, but it wasn't too bad, since his upper body had been in almost the same position when the injury had occurred. Closing his eyes, Kevin projected his astral form free of his body, then immediately drifted backward, partially into Josh's Sunfire, so that he could see his own injured back, the can of treatment spray still in his body's right hand, and still see the fight going on in front of his seated form.

Thankful that his growth spurt had given him the ability to touch objects with his astral form, Kevin telekinetically snatched the spray can into his hand, then carefully applied it to his body's injured back. The spray was both a cooling analgesic, to relieve the pain of a burn, and a gelling sealant that would keep the injured tissue covered, preventing contaminants from getting into the burn and causing infection or impeding the healing process. Even as he was focused on giving himself the proper treatment, the back of Kevin's mind wondered if the situation didn't qualify as another instance of his boyfriend's insanely ironic luck—Kevin only kept the can of burn treatment spray on him in addition to his miniature medical kit because it would be more reassuring to Josh's pyrophobia should he ever get burned and need Kevin to treat him. Instead, Kevin was using it on himself, yet his own phobia was of water, not fire. Josh probably just considered it his usual bad luck.

Snapping back into his body with an instant's thought, Kevin opened his eyes even as he was stuffing the burn spray back in his pocket. He heard Chris gasp as the wind was knocked out of him, and Kevin scrambled to his feet as Chris fell to the ground only a few yards away. Malcolm was grinning maliciously as he stepped forward, ready to kick Chris with his granite leg while Chris was down. Kevin sprang forward even as he rose, concentrating on his right fist while keeping his gaze fixed on Malcolm. The Mineral Molecular simply weighed too much for Kevin to keep tossing him around telekinetically; it had been a strain to stop his leap and fling him over Owen previously. Manipulating lesser amounts of mass, like just Malcolm's fists or telekinetically boosting his own strength was much easier.

Malcolm adjusted his attack as he saw Kevin rushing him, sneering at his shirtless form. Kevin was very fit and had a decent physique, but he wasn't nearly as built as Chris' stocky frame nor all whipcord muscle like Josh. Malcolm set his foot back down as Kevin cut him off from reaching Chris, and threw a stone-solid punch at Kevin's face, instead. The problem for Malcolm was that he didn't realize Kevin was the one who had telekinetically frozen him in mid-air previously; a slight bit of mental effort on Kevin's part, and Malcolm's fist was easily thrown off its trajectory at Kevin's head, missing him entirely.

Smirking, Kevin shifted his focus back to his right hand, curling his fingers back toward his wrist and exposing the heel of his palm. Josh and Chris had both taught the rest of the team that punching people in the head was stupid; unless you got their nose perfectly, you were just slamming the bones of your knuckles into the bones of their skull, nearly as bad for your hand as it was for their head. Instead, Kevin thrust his arm forward in a palm-strike to the bridge of Malcolm's nose, telekinetically holding Malcolm's head still and accelerating the movement of his own arm, smashing his hand into Malcolm's face. Kevin winced at the impact; if punching normal people's skulls was a bad idea, telekinetically slamming his knuckles into granite would surely have been much worse– –smashing his palm into it hadn't been exactly enjoyable.

Blinking in surprise at the nearly-stunning amount of force he had been hit with, Malcolm's body shifted back into flesh as he stumbled slightly. Unsure what Kevin had done but aware of the concentration on his face as he did it, Malcolm decided he couldn't let his opponent have any time to focus, meaning he couldn't take a moment to shift back into his granite form. Instead, he threw a quick feint at Kevin's chest, a strange spot to be punching that might confuse Kevin for an instant, then kicked at his knee instead.

Kevin saw Malcolm lose his focus and release his power; he stepped forward to attack before the Mineral Molecular could transform back, then jerked to a stop when he attacked instead of reactivating his power. Kevin frowned at Malcolm's fist, thrusting it sideways and lifting it so that it would skate over his shoulder instead of hitting his chest, but it was barely thrown off course at all. . .which meant it didn't have that much momentum behind it, because Malcolm was already pulling it back–—it had been a feint. Realizing that fact when Malcolm's arm was only slightly disturbed by his telekinetic tug, Kevin hopped back on one foot, lifting and swinging his leg wide to keep Malcolm's foot from kicking out his knee.

Malcolm leaped forward off his standing leg with a shout as he threw another punch, hoping to keep Kevin distracted so he couldn't focus his abilities. Malcolm had felt the tug on his feinting arm and realized that Kevin was the Psionic who had frozen him in mid-air when he had leaped at Owen; he didn't want to give Kevin another chance to use his telekinesis.

He was too late, however.

Kevin saw Malcolm springing at him and telekinetically seized the enemy Molecular. Kevin forced Malcolm's legs back down as he accelerated the Link towards him and accelerated his fist towards Malcolm's midsection. Malcolm gasped in surprise as he suddenly rose higher into the air, then the breath was explosively knocked out of him as his forward momentum folded him in half over Kevin's punch. Kevin turned and shoved both hands at Malcolm even as he was dropping, telekinetically throwing him a few yards away to collapse in a wheezing heap.

"Yeah, see how you like it..." Chris muttered under his only minimally restored breath as Kevin jogged up to him. He glanced aside at the wall of glittering, razor-edged ice crystals Fulfer had erected between herself and Lexa, but Lexa was on their side of the barrier, so that was fine. The ice refracted Lexa's strobes before they could blind Fulfer and its cold absorbed the energy out of her lasers, but the wall of it kept Fulfer from being able to spear Lexa, Chris, or Kevin with any fresh creations, either.

"Sumthin' weird..." Chris murmured as Kevin telekinetically stretched him out on his back, then began massaging his solar plexus, trying to restore Chris' breathing before Malcolm could recover his own. " I felt that guy howling, but we couldn't hear 'im 'til Lex's strobe..."

"Yeah, that's how they all got so close, too," Lexa said as she joined them, still keeping an eye on Fulfer's ice blockade. "I could feel the light shifting with my cloaking ability, but we didn't see anything. . .my eyes weren't seeing what the light was physically doing; it had to be a Psionic illusion." Kevin nodded, blinking as he realized how it fit together.

"Jamie was fighting a Psionic when we arrived to bail him and Owen out, the night you guys got here, we saw the green psi-bolts," Kevin said, his hazel eyes slightly distant as he remembered, not even concentrating on his hands as he massaged Chris' middle. "He told Josh the guy made three of himself, but they were all fake, Jamie went right through them. . .Illusions," Kevin finished with a nod, then looked at Lexa.

"He's probably keeping us from seeing or hearing him, easier to do that for just himself than all his people, and he's probably got tons of practice at it. I bet I can find him with my astral perceptions, see through his illusions, but I need to secure my body somewhere first," he finished quietly. Lexa nodded back.

"I can cloak you, smuggle you off the battlefield. . .back into the diner?" she asked.

"Around back, I can telekinetically open the fire door in the back room," Kevin agreed, then glanced down at Chris. "You okay on your own, now?"

"I can't hold it for long, but I've got enough breath back to give you two a hell of a distraction," Chris said with a wink as Kevin gave him a hand up to his feet. "You guys step back, pull your disappearing act when all eyes are on me in just a sec..." Chris finished, then turned and trotted toward Fulfer's forest of razor ice sculptures.

Lexa grabbed Kevin's wrist and tugged him toward the back wall of Eloy's Diner as Chris drew as deep a breath as he could. Fulfer was peering out from between the edges and points of her spears of ice, not at all sure that she wanted to stand up enough to throw a frost wave at Chris when he was clearly waiting for her.

Chris grinned at Fulfer and her wall of pointy ice, then shouted.

He didn't have the breath to sustain a cry long enough to build up too much of a resonance harmonic. . .but he didn't need to. Ice was H₂O, a very simple crystalline structure, and he wasn't trying to shatter it from a dozen yards away, like he had done two days ago. He was only a few yards away from the ice this time and already familiar with the crystal matrix that made Fulfer's frost-structures edged; they shattered after only a second.

Fulfer cried out and dove away from the collapsing wave of slush that was washing over her; in the background, Kevin and Lexa flared with light and vanished from sight as she activated her cloaking ability.

Nakamoto spun away from Josh as the longhaired Feral landed, lashing out with a surprise snapkick as he moved away. Josh abruptly halted his forward lunge after Nakamoto, heaving himself to one side and narrowly evading the Elemental's kick.

Snarling at Nakamoto's frustration of his efforts to seize him, Josh leaped a dozen feet to one side, passing Nakamoto up and turning in mid-air to remain facing him. Nakamoto paused, waiting to see if Josh would immediately spring at him from the crouched position of his landing; he was ready to evade the Feral's lunge and began charging two more thermal blasts around his hands as he paused.

Josh did indeed immediately spring at his opponent, but he knew Nakamoto would be ready for that and saw the heat-shimmer of his Elemental ability forming around his hands. Instead of leaping at Nakamoto, Josh sprang over him; he recognized the Asian man's fighting competence, and Shalimar had said he was an experienced martial artist. Josh knew an unorthodox move would throw a martial artist off more than perfectly executed ones would, because the artist couldn't be sure what their opponent would do next if they didn't respond the way a martial artist was trained to. Nakamoto knew Josh was a Feral and would expect him to fight with a big cat's reflexes and agility, but he didn't know that Josh had been studying martial arts since he was a teenager. . .Josh figured being able to anticipate Nakamoto's responses and then suddenly changing his own attack style would catch the Elemental by surprise.

Nakamoto spun to keep facing Josh as the Feral landed; he thrust a hand forward to fling his thermal charge at Josh, but Josh lashed out with one foot and all his Feral speed, kicking Nakamoto in the wrist and knocking his hand wide, causing the blast to miss. Nakamoto blinked in surprise, so conditioned to using his hands and forearms to deflect incoming attacks that his combat instincts didn't react to a strike that was already headed for the appropriate portion of his limb.

Frowning in anger, Nakamoto swept his other hand at Josh even as his first was knocked aside, flinging his larger second thermal blast in a wide arc. Worried about the growing amount of heat gathering around Nakamoto's other fist, Josh had been paying careful attention to it even as he kicked the Elemental's first hand aside. Seeing the second attack coming and in no position to leap away because his kicking leg was still returning to the ground, Josh simply folded his other leg beneath himself. Using his feline flexibility, Josh was able to place his knee on the ground even as the ball of its foot had not moved, laying his torso flat against his thigh and ducking beneath Nakamoto's blast.

Brennan cried out as he hit the ground badly, smashing into the blacktop with his shoulder and one hip, with all the weight of his legs behind it as his boots were hoisted higher into the air. Wincing in pain, he thrust his left arm at Shauna as he flopped onto his back, blasting at her with the biggest bolt of electricity he could. He hadn't taken the time to build up the charge with a tesla coil, but he didn't want to give Shauna the time to bring her ability to bear against him or his own power, either. He used his left hand not only because he had fallen on his right shoulder but also because his commring was on his right hand. . .Shauna wouldn't be able to redirect his aim since he had no metal on his left arm.

Unfortunately for Brennan, although Shauna had used the charge of her power to throw him and redirect his fall, her electromagnetic aura was still active around her body. She was staggered back half a step by the kinetic impact of his lightning bolt against her midriff, but her aura merely flared bright magenta light again, absorbing the energy of Brennan's electricity.

"Damn, that's annoying," Brennan muttered as he jerked his torso into a sit-up, then heaved himself to his feet, narrowing his eyes at Shauna as he rose. She was throwing electromagnetic energy around the whole area as she dissipated his blasts; that meant she was ionizing the air around her. Brennan smirked as he realized he could use that to his advantage and slipped his commring into his pocket, to keep his aim from being adjusted against his will.

"How much can you take, Sister?" Brennan called out to Shauna as he quickly rolled his hands over one another repeatedly, generating a massive charge. The magenta glow coming from Shauna's eyes narrowed as she frowned; she could feel Brennan not only building up an enormous amount of electricity but reaching out to the ionized air around them both, gathering its charge up as well.

Electric blue crackles of light formed in the air around Brennan, streaking wisps of electricity flowing from all the metal around him and Shauna to join the growing ball of lightning rioting between his hands. Shauna began to back away worriedly, raising both her hands in alarm as Brennan thrust both his hands forward with a kihap battle cry.

The blazing blue bolt of electricity surged off of Brennan's hands, nearly as thick around as his forearms as it streaked into Shauna. Tiny threads of electricity still connected the bolt to the antenna and front bumper of the car next to Brennan, as well as the metal storm grate at the parking lot's edge on his other side. Shauna cried out even as Brennan yelled, raising her magenta-glowing hands.

Her own cry being an answer to Brennan's, Shauna managed to counter his attack despite the fact her shout was also laced with fear. Knowing she could not safely absorb the massive amount of energy he was hurling at her, Shauna used the electromagnetic fields around her hands to redirect it. Reflecting Brennan's tremendous lightning bolt off of her left palm and into her right, Shauna angled her right hand to bounce the blast back into the car next to Brennan.

Although the bolt had struck the car's front and nowhere near its fuel tank, so it did not explode, the titanic blast still blew various bits of the car off of it. The headlights shattered, the antenna blasted upward like a rocket, and the side mirror was ripped off the car as the fender buckled from the impact. Shauna thrust both her glowing hands at Brennan and the car, using the renewed charge of her aura to fling all of the airborne bits of metal at him. With her right hand, she sent the side mirror flying into the side of Brennan's head.

Charlie cried out in angry embarrassment as his pants were torn away, then his cry shifted to pain as he slammed his genitals into the ground. Owen hopped forward from his crouched position immediately behind Charlie, landing in a crouch again almost literally on top of the Canine Feral, with his boots on either side of Charlie's thighs. Owen smashed both his fists into Charlie's kidneys, causing the copper-haired GSAgent to gasp soundlessly with pain because he had already emptied his lungs crying out.

Owen leaned forward over Charlie, laying one hand flat on the ground next to Charlie's ribs to support himelf, then wrapped his other enormous hand over the back of Charlie's skull. Owen shoved his arm forward and down, smashing Charlie's forehead into the concrete. He hadn't used all of his strength, even though he had been tempted, because he most likely would have shattered Charlie's skull and killed him. Owen was also tempted to swat Charlie's bare ass as hard as he could with both hands, which would certainly leave the punk with a stinging reminder of his defeat that would remain with him for a while, but Owen knew he didn't have time for that. . .Charlie wasn't alone.

A rush of wind approaching his ear made Owen flinch sideways, the only thing that kept Erra's nails from tearing into the side of his head, possibly even ripping his ear off. She was almost as fast as Shalimar or as steathy as Josh, having snuck up on Owen as he was dealing with Charlie and using that as a distraction that had nearly let her get the drop on Owen.

"Hands off, that's my punching bag you're abusing!" she snarled at Owen as he sprang aside, putting Charlie's unconscious and half-naked body between them.

"Oh, is that why he pepper-sprayed me?" Owen asked without looking over his shoulder at her as he twisted to dodge Tonio's pouncing leap. "He likes the abuse, but I'm not his type?" he called out to her as he swung a backfist at the Lupine Feral to keep him back, then batted aside Tonio's answering kick with his free hand.

"EW!" Erra spat with a grimace of distaste as she leaped at Owen again, forcing him to duck to let her flying kick sail over him, but Tonio was working with her. The Link Feral attempted to kick out Owen's knee as he was ducking beneath the GSAgent redhead; Owen was forced to throw himself sideways into a roll, coming back up to his feet at the same time Tonio did and Erra landed. "I'm not the one taking his pants off, now am I?" she smirked at Owen, sinking into a combat stance that flaunted her physique, in mockery of Owen's stripping the other redheaded Feral GSAgent's pants off.

"Double Ew," Owen muttered to himself with a frown as Tonio and Erra both closed in on his flanks.

"Eve only filled me in a little, at your request," Anne told Jesse, meeting his tense, pale blue eyes with her own steady hazel ones, the salmon pink of her shirt making them appear slightly more brown than green. "She said you're feeling isolation, because your situation is different from everyone else's. Can you tell me about that?" she asked. Eve hadn't told her what the situation was, so Anne found herself curious anyway, wondering what was going on with her friends.

Jesse forced himself to meet Anne's eyes, and explained about New Mutant Expiry Dates.

He explained that they were in part determined by a New Mutant's power level, and that all of Mutant X could thus expect to die fairly young, being some of the most powerful examples of each of their New Mutant Types.

Anne blanched at the realization that she was a significantly powerful Psionic, as was Eloy, and could expect to reach her expiry date in a timeframe similar to Jesse's and the rest of Mutant X.

Jesse explained that Adam had managed to cure Jesse's unstable genetic sequences, voiding his expiry date. He explained that he had in fact passed his expiry date well over a month ago, but Lexa was rapidly approaching hers.

Anne listened to Jesse's explanations with dawning horror, growing increasingly more agitated herself. She had prepared herself to maintain a stoic presence for Jesse, confident her knowledge of his mind would let her help him more swiftly and send him on his way before his presence risked the security of her secrets. She had not counted on the issues troubling him to actively include her, which they did even moreso than they did every New Mutant in existence.

Anne knew her power level, and she knew that she was more than likely more powerful than Lexa, quite possibly more powerful than Jesse. The fact that she only used a low level of her empathy and rarely used any of her greater mental abilities might well be the only reason she was still alive.

The possibility upset her, to say the least.

Jesse's eyes grew more distant as he told his story, losing himself in the outpouring of his fears and concerns. Re-immersing himself in the emotions as he relayed their prior experiences to Anne verbally, Jesse didn't realize she was experiencing them along with him due to her empathy. As Jesse grew distraught describing the events of his breakdown the night before, Anne finally reached her own breaking point.

Struggling to keep from sobbing even as Jesse's own tears rolled down his face, Anne forced herself to maintain control as she manifested a brilliant starburst of empathic Psionic energy on her forehead. She had told herself that she knew Jesse better than she did Eve or Owen, that she would not use her powers to force his psychological recovery the way she had theirs, but she hadn't counted on this. She hadn't considered that Jesse's troubles could also be her own, literally as well as emotionally, and she couldn't deal with helping him and preserving her own secrets at the same time. She couldn't go back to the way things had been, so she blasted Jesse's mind with a psi-bolt, cauterizing his panic and feelings of powerlessness, giving him the emotional stability to be as patient as the situation required, to wait for Adam and have faith in Eve, as Brennan had advised him.

Crying, Anne stood up as Jesse blinked his way back to normal conscious awareness and emotional stability.

"I— –I'm sorry, sorry, Jesse, this is just..." Anne choked out, trying to sniffle and laugh. "God, this is so very, very unprofessional of me..." She broke off, her words choking to a halt as she realized they were literally true because of what she had just done, not just because she was losing her composure in front of a "patient" she was counseling.

"Oh, Anne, no..." Jesse immediately responded, realizing what it meant to re-live an emotional breakdown next to a powerful empath. "No, geeze, I'm sorry. . .I should have warned you; you couldn't have known what I was going to say..." Jesse trailed off, having risen from the couch and raised one hand to Anne, but unsure if he should actually step forward and touch her.

"No, no..." Anne said breathlessly, huffing out an exasperated laugh at the situation and keeping her back to Jesse, quite certain she didn't want to let him see her face at the moment. "I just. . .just give me a minute, this is a lot to take in, and then we'll go from there," she told him, then hurried down the hall to her bathroom.

"Of course. Take your time," Jesse called after her, then turned to take a casual look around Anne's apartment. He had been too distracted to pay it any attention when he entered, other than to think "white", and note the artful use of clear Christmas lights and colored yet not-overly-colorful ribbons on the walls. Feeling much better now that he had gotten things off his chest, even though he now felt guilty about surprising Anne the same way Lexa had done to Eve, Jesse considered the details of Anne's living room. There weren't really a lot to take in; she clearly held to an austere décor scheme.

Jesse supposed that made sense; Anne wouldn't want a riot of visual details to distract people from the situations she was trying to help them deal with or get them to confront. In fact, if she had to use her illusion ability to convince someone, doing so in a mostly-white environment was probably easier, or made it easier for her to visualize what she wanted to project. Jesse considered glancing in Anne's kitchen, but he decided that would be rude. Maybe not as bad as opening her desk or going into her bedroom, but it would still be a breach of her privacy. She hadn't invited him to help himself, after all. On the other hand, looking at whatever she had left atop her desk wouldn't be out of line, as long as he didn't touch anything. Anne was certainly smart enough to have not left anyone's private information on her desktop, so Jesse was sure it would be acceptable.

Wandering over to Anne's desk in the corner, Jesse noticed Anne's paperweight was out of place. Or maybe not, since it was indeed sitting on top of some papers, but it still looked wrong. Jesse supposed she might actually have call to use it as a paperweight if she opened her balcony door for fresh air, but it still looked strange. Moving closer to look, Jesse realized the paperweight looked odd both because it was at the bottom of the sheet of stationery on Anne's desk instead of the middle, and because its blank side was facing her signature at the bottom of the page, instead of facing the rear of the desk and the top of the page.

Jesse saw that the paper was indeed unimportant, just a note to her employees at her fashion boutique. Jesse knew Anne spent quite a lot of time at Eloy's Diner helping him with Mutant Underground business, so it wasn't surprising that she would write instructions for her boutique employees. Something about Anne's handwriting had caught Jesse's attention, however, and he stared at the message, trying to figure out what it was. He knew he had never seen her writing before, so it couldn't be that it looked familiar, even though that was the only thing he could come up with. Trying to decide if it was the angle of the sun's light coming through the balcony window, Jesse glanced at the blank side of the paperweight sitting at the bottom of the sheet of paper. The sun was shining across the sheet of paper from its bottom, alongside but not illuminating the blank face of the paperweight.

Looking at Anne's signature reflected on the featureless black square of the paperweight, Jesse gasped in surprise.

Once they were away from the immediate grounds of the battle, Lexa and Kevin hurried around the back of Eloy's Diner, knowing the combatants would be too involved in the fight to notice the quick moving shimmers of their nearly-invisible silhouettes. They hurried up to the fire exit from the rear office, Lexa dropping her light-cloak as they reached it, so that Kevin could see his own hands, to coordinate his telekinetic focus.

"You got this?" she asked, wanting to make sure the teammate who was separating himself from the rest of the group would be secure before she left him to go solo.

"Yeah, I just gotta turn the lock on the inside first, so the alarm doesn't go off when I open the door," Kevin muttered, his eyes distant as he placed his right hand flat against the door and made telekinetic contact with it. He mentally "felt" his way along the door's pushbar mechanism on the inside of the building, reaching inside the key box and manipulating the pins and tumblers to turn the lock, disengaging the fire alarm. After that, it was a simple mental effort to pull the pushbar towards himself, opening the door from the inside.

"Got it," Kevin said as the door opened, grabbing its edge with his left hand. "They outnumber us; you go back and help whoever needs it. I'll find the illusionist and take him out, then just give telekinetic astral backup to whoever needs it," he finished as he slipped inside.

"Right," Lexa replied, nodding even as she turned away from the fire door. As the door closed behind Kevin, Lexa flared with the halo of her light-cloak activation, hurrying around the corner to return to the battle.

What neither Lexa nor Kevin realized was that Chaplain was more than just a Psionic Illusionist; he could also sense every mind in his vicinity, whether he could see them or not, whether they were housed in a person's brain or projecting onto the astral plane. He was indeed lurking on the edges of the parking lot under a Psionic cloak, and he had known where Lexa and Kevin were as they snuck by under her invisibility. He was waiting for Kevin's astral form to return to the battlefield, familiar with Kevin's ability after having watched the Californian team secure their nearby safehouse two days ago. He had a plan he was looking forward to trying out on the astral telekinetic, but there was a simpler amusement to be had, first.

Fulfer had been knocked off her feet by the remnants of her own ice, slipping and sliding in the wave of slush that washed over her, propelled by Chris' concussive shout. Chris had turned back to face Malcolm once more, the both of them gradually regaining their breath. Lexa was working her way back to the edge of the parking lot, sliding between two parked cars to remain hidden when she released her cloak, so that she could fire her lasers or strobes as a surprise attack.

It was simplicity itself for Chaplain to project an illusion of Lexa's form over where she actually was, enabling Fulfer and the rest of Bishop's and his agents to see her clearly. He was a skilled enough illusionist to be selective about which minds perceived his illusions; although it took some effort, he could exclude the minds of Mutant X from receiving the image of Lexa, leaving her and her teammates clueless that her major tactical advantage had been countered.

Fulfer grinned as she saw Lexa carefully picking her way up to and between two cars, looking ridiculous as she moved slowly and deliberately, but in plain sight. Chaplain had realized her cloaking ability when he sensed her mind the night the original team arrived in California; he had briefed his team on that ability, and made the suggestion that he could counter it without Mutant X being aware. Realizing that was what she was seeing, Fulfer carefully kept watch on Lexa from the corner of her eye, making it look like she was watching the rest of the battle and still having trouble getting up out of the slush wave, even though she had one foot and the other knee beneath herself.

When Lexa hunkered down between the two cars, leaning partially over the nearer one's hood so that she could aim her laser, Fulfer struck. The farther car was an SUV, and the rear end of its side was quite visible above the nearer car's trunk. Grinning maliciously, Fulfer threw both handfuls of her frost matrix power at the sports car Lexa was leaning over, one high and one low. The higher blob of blue energy sailed over the sports car's trunk, striking the side of the SUV and instantly filling the space between the two vehicles with twisted blades of ice. The lower handful of energy whizzed beneath the sports car's front bumper, striking the ground between the two cars and thrusting more spears of ice upwards into the space between them.

Lexa had turned to her right in alarm, to face the suddenly forming ice structure next to her, and she naturally backed away from it as the crystalline spears extended toward her as they grew. Unfortunately for Lexa, this left her back turned to the second frost matrix as it manifested, and its rapidly forming crystals stabbed into her back, rear, and the backs of her thighs. Lexa cried out in surprise and pain, jerking forward and away from the ice stabbing her, but she maintained the presence of mind to drop lower as she moved. She managed to contort herself to avoid running into the first razor-edged ice formation as she moved away from the second one, but she was left with little room to move. Her lasers could melt the ice, certainly, but it would take time that she did not have. . .especially since Fulfer could make her ice crystals grow longer by hitting them with another charge of her power.

Shalimar threw herself sideways violently, using her slight size and compact frame to her advantage, avoiding the swipe of the onrushing Janessa's claws. Having flung herself parallel to the ground to evade the Arachnid Feral, Shalimar simply tucked her feet beneath herself to land, whipping her head back up and tossing her hair out of her face as her golden cat's eyes sought out her opponent.

Janessa was already on top of her, the arachnid woman's Feral speed being greater than Shalimar's own. Shalimar threw herself backward, continuing the motion of snapping her head backwards into a backhandspring, her throat and gut just barely arching out of the paths of Janessa's clawed hands in time. Janessa sprinted after Shalimar, her incredible speed forcing Shalimar to keep handspringing in reverse, giving her no time to shift her momentum into running with each landing. Janessa's hideous spider face grinned, her mandibles clacking, knowing that Shalimar could only backspring in a straight line, and that she was about to run out of room and hit the wall of a building.

Shalimar's feline agility made her an accomplished gymnast, and her keen Feral senses enabled her to keep track of her surroundings even as she flipped across the parking lot. She saw both the wall coming and Janessa's gleefully anticipatory expression. Mentally smirking to herself, Shalimar adjusted the arc of her body on the second-to-last backhandspring, bending her back at an inhumanly tight angle to prevent her feet from covering as much distance. The carefully executed maneuver didn't really look any different from all the backhandsprings that had preceeded it, but it positioned Shalimar to make her move.

Instead of backhandspringing yet again, which would only bang her lower legs into the brick wall behind her while she was upside-down, making her fall and leaving her at Janessa's mercy —which was no doubt what the Arachnid Feral expected to happen— Shalimar instead threw herself into a backflip, curling into a ball as she reverse-somersaulted through the air. Firing both legs out into the wall behind her in an airborne dropkick as her upper body rotated away from the building, Shalimar suddenly went from flipping away from Janessa into a Superman-esque flying double hammerblow at the unsuspecting Link, piledriving into her abdomen with both fists and knocking her over.

Although protected by her keratin exoskeletal armor, Janessa was still humanoid and mammal enough to need her lungs to breathe. As such, the carapace plating over her solar plexus and stomach was soft and flexible enough to shift with her breathing, allowing her abdomen to expand. . .or compress when Shalimar smashed both fists into it, catching Janessa completely off her guard. The wind was knocked out of Janessa, and Shalimar struck quickly, knowing she would only have a moment.

She had landed lying half atop Janessa, her elbows at the taller woman's hips and her knees between Janessa's calves. Shalimar threw herself upright, getting one leg under herself and leaping upward before Janessa could grab her or strike with the wicked points on her armored knees. Shalimar thrust both her legs directly away from her pelvis once again, this time straight down and into Janessa's torso. Keratin armor cracked and crunched as both Shalimar's weight and strength came down upon Janessa, and the Arachnid Feral cried out in surprised pain.

Janessa's midsection did not provide stable footing, and Shalimar was slipping off balance even as Janessa flinched involuntarily with reaction. Shalimar dove sideways into a cartwheel away from Janessa before she could fall, grinning as her hair fell back into place as she moved upright again. Janessa was getting to her feet, but she was injured and no longer capable of overrunning Shalimar with her arachnid speed; their fight had become much more even.

"Well, I guess you're pretty slick now, aren'tcha, Gumby?" Franklin snickered as he sauntered up to Jamie, watching him flail helplessly as he tried to get up or even get off his back. Jamie had managed to roll sideways off of his belly and onto his back, but with his entire body being frictionless, he couldn't hold onto anything to pull himself upright any more than he could push himself up off the ground.

Franklin frowned as he approached Mutant X's Californian Molecular; it looked like something was wrong. He was flopping against the ground, as people generally did when Franklin hit them with his frictionless ability, but something was wrong with his body, as well. Chaplain had explained that the slender young man with the wild dark hair was an Elastic Molecular, capable of stretching his body and striking his opponents from yards away, which Fulfer had corroborated; they had both been taken by surprise when the Ursine Feral had thrown his smaller companion at them. But now the young man's features seemed to be stretching at random; his bone structure seemed to be shifting beneath his skin, making his appearance seem to change. . .his features looked like they were dark Irish one moment, like the Sonic Elemental's, and Irish the next, then Eastern Euorpean of some sort; his looks even seemed to soften to a feminine appearance...

Jamie kept elastically shifting his shape, blending his own features first with Chris', then Josh's, then Owen's, then his alternative female form, and so on. He tried to shift one half of his face to one look while applying another look to the other, shifting different portions of his body out of sync with each other. . .it wasn't actually working very well, but that was fine. He was only doing it to distract the enemy Molecular, and the weirder it looked, the more likely it was to work as a distraction. He had figured out a way to get upright using only himself, not pushing against any of his surroundings, so it ought to work. He just needed the badguy to get close enough...

Franklin slowly drew closer, his jaw dropping in shock at the disturbing sight of the. . .person, on the ground ahead of him. He, or maybe she, seemed to practically be melting, their whole body rippling, even shifting colors from pale to dusky, one eyelid closed and stretched so it almost seemed featureless, the other stretched open so wide Franklin could see the curve of the other Molecular's eyeball all the way around...

Franklin's upper lip curled in fascinated disgust; Jamie just hoped he hadn't gone too far with the squick factor. Between the strain of the full and rapid shifting and the odd molecular sensation of being entirely frictionless, Jamie was starting to go numb in his extremeties. He couldn't keep it up much longer, but if Franklin slowed down in awe and didn't get close enough...

"Okay, ew. Who knew making elastic frictionless would do THAT?" Franklin asked rhetorically, shaking his head as he blinked, then stepped forward. "Sticking your squishy face to the ground will be doing you a favor..."

Jamie ceased all use of his elastic ability, snapping back to his normal shape as he threw his left arm forward at his feet and jerked his shoulders upward, tensing all of his abdominal muscles in a sit-up. Jamie was easily the most slender member of the Californian division of Mutant X, his frame considerably smaller than Kevin's wide shoulders, but Jamie was wiry. He enjoyed working out with Owen, and keeping himself as strong as he could better enabled him to throw his elastic limbs farther and pull on the things he grabbed from a distance that much harder. He jerked the upper half of his body upright easily, even if his frictionless lower half slid ten inches across the ground in the process. It was ten inches closer to Franklin, so that just meant Jamie's fist would hit him that much harder when he threw a surprise punch at Franklin's solar plexus.

With the ease of long practice, Jamie timed the elasticization of the bones and muscles in his right arm to coincide properly with its extension into the punch, his fist sailing along at the end of his stretching arm. Jamie grinned as his attack slammed home; he had waited for Franklin to be only five or six feet away, unsure how accurately he could throw a punch from a seated position when his ass was sliding around underneath him, and not wanting Franklin to have time to react to the surprise. The punch landed with even more force than normal; it seemed that Jamie's excessive stretching before he threw it made the elastic of his arm more slack than usual, meaning that it stretched with less resistance and therefore applied that much less drag to his fist at its end.

Franklin's breath was knocked out of him with a barked gasp of surprise, his cry cutting off in a voiceless wheeze as his solar plexus seized up and his diaphragm froze. His concentration was shattered, and Jamie felt the frictionless state of his molecular structure return to normal.

With his kicking leg now stretched out on the ground behind him, Josh was not in much of a position to move, so he reached forward with both arms and grabbed Nakamoto's left leg. Wrapping his left hand around the back of Nakamoto's ankle and placing his right hand against the Elemental's knee, Josh was easily able to knock the man over. With a simple shove against the joint, Nakamoto had no choice but to fall backward, and slapping out of the fall kept him from building another heat charge.

Josh released Nakamoto's leg as he fell, knowing that he could hold on with his easily superior Feral strength, but that would probably only get him a kick in the face or the fingers. Given that one hand was already bleeding, Josh didn't feel like adding broken bones to the mix. With his feet free, Nakamoto kicked them up into the air as he landed on his back and slapped out of the fall, throwing his feet back behind his head and rolling into a reverse somersault up onto his feet even as Josh straightened his folded leg and also rose. Nakamoto turned and dashed between two cars, apparently trying to use them to keep Josh from being able to reach him; if Josh slid between the cars with Nakamoto, he would have no room to dodge the Elemental's blasts.

Snorting with amusement at the attempt, Josh sprang into the air once more, landing with one foot on the hood of each of the cars, at the bases of their windshields. Lowering himself slightly into a combat stance, Josh raised his fists as well as one eyebrow, smirking at Nakamoto.

"You're Feral, more agile than me—" Nakamoto conceded. "–But I'm a Thermal Elemental..." Nakamoto smirked back at Josh as he looked up, his eyes sneering. "..Are you heat-proof like me?" he asked as he shoved both hands at the gas tanks of the cars on either side of him.

Both cars erupted in enormous fireballs as Nakamoto laughed maliciously.

Standing behind a public mailbox and leaning back against a streetlight with his arms crossed over his chest, Francis Chaplain grinned.

The fight had been going moderately well, some of the members of Mutant X faring acceptably poorly against their Link and rogue GSAgent opponents, and some doing unfortunately better. Chaplain had been disappointed when Mutant X realized he was hiding the true attack force from them, but it had been a setback he could deal with. He still had an ace concealed up his sleeve, not to mention he himself had remained undetected.

He planned to use his illusions to tip the battle in his agents' favor, just as he had been contemplating the other day; he just needed to take care of one little detail, first. He wasn't sure how different astral perceptions were from physical ones, so it might be possible for Mutant X's Psionic to determine what was reality and what was not. However, if he was projecting his consciousness astrally, then he had no choice but to perceive the pychic impressions of the world around him. Chaplain was unsure if the projecting telekinetic could still perceive the ordinary world without his physical senses present, but if he were to be encompassed in a fully-enclosed illusion, receiving no sensory input but what Chaplain chose to give him...

It would be like having the pretty guy trapped in a virtual reality of Chaplain's design. Overriding someone's senses in their entirety was normally difficult; he couldn't do such a thing to more than a single subject because multiple subjects would have multiple points of view, including of one another. But the telekinetic with the longish hair would be a single subject. . .and the fact that he was already cut off from his physical senses meant that Chaplain would be able to maintain his other illusions at the same time. He had been anticipating the possibility ever since he had gathered the relevant information during their fight the other day.

And the broad-shouldered guy's astral form had just come through the diner's wall, returning to the parking lot.

Kevin had seated himself in Eloy's office chair, rolling it back into the corner so that Eloy could still get anything he might need from his desk without Kevin's comatose form in the way. He had smirked to himself as he thought of the surprised expression that would cross Eloy's face if he came into his office to find Kevin in his chair, shirtless, and bent double over his own knees to keep his burns from pressing against the chair's back. Only employees of the diner or Anne ever entered the back office anyway, and they were all conductors of the Mutant Underground, so Kevin felt safe enough remaining "in the open".

Projecting free of his body and passing through the wall of Eloy's Diner, Kevin flew up at angle over the parking lot, looking down at the battle below to see how his team was faring. Brennan was trading energy blasts with some chick who was glowing 80s hot pink, and Shalimar was fighting with something damned freaky-weird that looked like it had escaped from a grade B sci-fi movie with a big budget. Chris was fighting that stone guy again, and Jamie looked like he was down, but he was almost impossible to hurt– –Kevin would check to see if he truly needed help after he found the Illusionist Psionic.

Owen had apparently pantsed one of the enemy Ferals, one with an extremely pale ass, which was kind of hilarious. Less funny was the fact that Owen was still facing two others at the same time, the redheaded cat lady Kevin had pulled Josh off of when the original team arrived, and a dark man who moved with the cool confidence of a wolf. Kevin knew how capable Owen was in a hand-to-hand fight though; he wasn't worried about the Big Guy. Kevin was mildly surprised to find that he could see Lexa, slightly, but she was a shadowy image, like her cloak was only half-working. His astral form blinked in surprise when he realized he was only seeing Lexa on the psychic level of his astral perceptions; Kevin grinned as he recalled Anne explaining the differences to him, when she adjusted his powers on the astral plane.

Lexa must have done something to give her position away, or maybe one of the Ferals had spotted her and told the frost chick. . .she had just pinned Lexa between the cars, and looked like she was moving in to finish the job. Kevin's astral form rotated to face the cars where Lexa was trapped, about to flash forward and free her when his attention was caught by his lover. Kevin spotted a flash of movement by another pair of cars on the other side of the lot; it was the Thermal Elemental who had been working with the Frost Molecular the other day, who had obviously been the one who had burned Kevin at the start of the fight. Josh was chasing him, leaped ahead of him onto the hoods of the cars...

Kevin silently screamed in horror as the cars Josh was standing on exploded in twin fireballs, each almost twenty feet in diameter. Kevin could only stare in shock, completely frozen, then his hovering astral form curled up in a ball of grief, wailing in silent anguish as he watched his lover's blazing form stagger out of the inferno.

Josh was a mass of charred third-degree burns and flames, his clothes on fire, what little was left of his hair ablaze, all of his skin cracked and red where it wasn't blackened entirely. He only managed to stagger a step or two away from the burning wreckage of the cars before he collapsed, the twisted claw of his fire-withered arm extended towards his car, the last place he had seen Kevin.

Seeing that Josh's final act was to reach out for him, Kevin was consumed by a rage he had never known before, far more intense than anything he had ever felt previously, more intense than his panic when the football team had nearly drowned him in the high school swimming pool, greater than his horror when he had been trapped in the enclosure filling with water in the Dominion's maze. . .if he stopped to think about it, Kevin would probably have thought he was even angrier than Owen got when he saw the GSA torturing New Mutants, but Kevin wasn't thinking.

He was looking for the Asian Thermal Elemental, and he was going to kill him.

Kevin frowned with a searing death glare on his face as the raging inferno that had been the two cars writhed in place. Josh's killer hadn't emerged from the flames yet, and the back of Kevin's head claimed that something was wrong. He had seen the man using his power two days ago, heating the safehouse door and throwing rippling waves of thermal energy that filled the air with heat shimmer as it was superheated, but the man had no control over flames once he started them burning; that was a Molecular ability. His Elemental mutation obviously made him immune to heat, since he had filled the air around himself with heat trying to find Kevin when he thought Kevin was an invisible attacker, but that wouldn't enable him to stay within an enormous blaze. He'd run out of air; whether he cared about the temperature of the atmosphere around him or not, he still had to care about its oxygen content.

The deliberate motion of the flames suggested Kevin was wrong, however, and even as he wondered where Josh's killer was and how the man could remain there, the towering flames coiled together in a twisting column of fire. The fiery construct surged off the laughing Elemental's hand, smashing into the black truck parked behind Eloy's Diner even as Kevin spotted the Asian man when the flames drew away from him. Kevin was just about to flash forward right up to the guy and lay him out with an astral telekinetic punch to the face, then get really creative. . .when the truck only a few yards from the back door of Eloy's office exploded.

Kevin gasped silently in shock as piercing, burning pain ripped through his astral form. He had never felt anything like it; he didn't normally feel anything while projecting, unless he deliberately touched something with his astral fingertips to see what it felt like. . .even when he pushed his telekinesis too far while projecting and knew he'd have a migrain for it when he stopped, he didn't have any pain while he was projecting...

Kevin turned around in surprise, blinking in renewed shock as the world stated fading around his astral form as he moved. The last thing he saw as he looked back at Eloy's Diner was the debris of the exploded truck littering the drive behind the diner, smoking pieces of metal smashed into its cinderblock walls, the fire door smashed in by the force of the explosion...

Then the world faded out entirely, leaving Kevin in a featureless grey expanse.

Oh, God.

Was he dead?

John Bishop stepped aside after he entered Haven's lounge area, gesturing with his head for Eve to continue in when she hesitated, presumably because his hands were full with the tarp.

"Please, sit, and we'll chat," he told her, still smiling maniacally as he lifted the blue plastic in his hands slightly. "I just needed to get this first." Bishop continued to smile patiently in a less-than-pleasant fashion as Eve carefully entered the lounge area after him, turning to keep facing him the entire time. His crazily delighted grin spread into a broad smile as he nodded reassuringly at her, not put out in the slightest by Eve's obvious distrust.

Eve backed into the lounge, passing behind the broad length of the sectional sofa's long side. She side-stepped between the sofa and the recliner between it and the couch, watching warily as Bishop walked around the far end of the sectional and into the U-shaped seating area in front of the lounge area's giant-screen TV. He gestured for her to sit in the recliner she stood in front of, even as he rotated its twin at the other end of the sectional to face her instead of the television. Eve frowned contemplatively as she sat; Bishop would be as far as he could get from her if he sat there, was he trying to reassure her, gain her trust in some bizarre fashion?

Her frown deepened as she reconsidered the possibility of reassurance, continuing to watch Bishop suspiciously as he crouched and laid the pad of the tarp on the floor in front of the recliner. He unfolded it to his left, so that its length stretched from the recliner to the couch, then flipped the folded length of the pad over and over towards Eve, unfolding it so that it covered the whole of the space within the U-shaped seating area of the lounge. Eve tensed slightly as the insane Psionic neared her, wondering what he was doing, but he merely smiled at her once more –which was still disturbing– then turned around and crossed back to the other recliner. Deciding to take an active role in the situation, Eve spoke up as he moved away:

"So, you said you wanted to speak here in the lounge. Let's talk about mutations, since my work with them is what we have in common. What sort of clairsentience do you have that told you there was a tarp of nearly perfect dimensions to cover the lounge's seating area in the rear corner of the back storage room?" she asked, prepared to analyze his every response and reaction with her genius intellect and hoping he would inadvertently reveal something she could use against him or Davis to get out of the situation.

"Ah, yes. Clairsentience," Bishop replied with his small self-amused smile as he sat down. "You might say they're visions. That and empathy, that's me," he chuckled, raising his head even as he laughed with his eyes closed. When he opened them, his gaze was already meeting Eve's, and she shivered. He grinned again as a Psionic starburst manifested on his forehead. "That, and the psi-bolts. Can't forget those. You can attempt to manipulate me, my dear Doctor Aybel, but rest assured I am in complete control of this situation." He smirked knowingly at her. "Your companions will not be leaving the restaurant for some while yet, and even if they were to hurry back this very second, I'll still be gone before they could get here."

Hah, Eve thought to herself, suppressing the urge to smirk back at Bishop. They're already on their way back; Chris understood me. We might get the drop on you after all, CrazyBoy.

Regrettably for Eve, she was unaware that Bishop did indeed know exactly what he was talking about, that her team would have to finish fighting with his Links and Chaplain's rogues before they could rush to her rescue.

The two enemy Ferals were working as partners, in tandem, utilizing one another as Pack to gain an advantage over Owen. Neither were anywhere near as big or as strong as Owen was, he had reach and power on his side, but both were difficult to bring to bear when his targets were being careful to use each other as cover. Owen didn't mind fighting defensively, he knew that if he moved to make an attack on either of them, the other would take him from behind. The problem was, they were keeping him between the two of them regardless, so when Owen moved to fend off whichever one attacked him, the other would be slipping behind him.

Owen was fast enough to keep repositioning himself, continually turning to swat one or the other of his opponents away when they tried to take advantage of the others maneuver. He had blocked a kick from Erra, spun to fend off Tonio's rush from behind him, and ducked when Erra threw a punch as Owen turned his head. He sprang aside from his ducking crouch when Tonio leapt at him, then had to roll when Erra pounced where Owen was landing from his evasion of the biker's attack.

Tonio had also leaped a second time, landing just ahead of where Owen's roll ended, with Owen getting up on his hands and knees. The Lupine Feral smashed an elbow down into Owen's broad back, knocking him back down to the pavement. The shaggy haired Link drew one biker-booted foot back to kick Owen's ribs in, but he had made a mistake. He had merely rammed the point of his elbow into the muscular middle of Owen's back, using his Feral strength to drive the bigger man into the ground. If he had targeted Owen's kidneys, he might have been stunned long enough for Tonio to land his kick. Because he hadn't done anything more than give Owen a charley horse he could ignore and make him have to get up off the ground for a second time...

..Owen was able to swipe an enormous hand out and grab Tonio's ankle as he kicked.

Rolling onto his back, away from Tonio even as he caught the Lupine Feral's foot, Owen startled his opponent and pulled him off balance, his arms pinwheeling as he straddled Owen's midsection, standing on only one foot. The dark-haired thug's expression was shifting from surprise to alarm as he realized the vulnerable position he was in, but Owen was already grinning fiercely as he struck.

With Tonio standing awkwardly over him and one of his ankles in Owen's grasp, it was ridiculously easy for Owen to ram the heel of his free palm into Tonio's crotch, clenching his fingers and seizing the pain-paralyzed Link's groin in his huge hand before Tonio had even finished gasping for breath to cry out in pain. Owen lifted the ankle he was holding with one hand and yanked his other hand back over his head, throwing Tonio well past his center of gravity and into free fall. Owen planted one foot against the ground as he kicked with the other, flexing his leg to raise his pelvis off the ground as his kicking foot smashed into Tonio's back.

Knocked off balance by having his immobilized leg lifted, yanked forward by the groin, and kicked tremendously hard in the back, Tonio went flying over the upper half of Owen's body where he was lying. . .straight into Erra, who had been charging at Owen's head. She screeched a snarling protest at her new fighting partner flying at her, and seized the wrist that flailed into her path. Spinning in place, she hip-checked Tonio's airborne form and flipped him over her shoulder, releasing him to complete his fall as she kept spinning, back around to face front and finish charging Owen. Tonio's mind was still mostly frozen with the pain in his groin and the resulting nausea in his gut, unable to keep up with the world around him as he was kicked, spun, and thrown through it.

Tonio crashed flat onto his back almost a dozen feet from Owen, having made no coordinated effort to take the impact whatsoever and smashing the wind out himself completely. He simply sprawled where he fell with his eyes only half open in pain and discomfort, his hands vaguely twitching in the direction of his groin, but he couldn't even move that far, much less roll onto his side and curl up.

Now that Franklin's frictionless ability had been ended, Jamie was free to move as he wished. He grinned to himself, pleased he had figured out a way to take the fight to Franklin without using his bad leg, or at least not the portion of it that was injured. Jamie got up on his right foot and left knee while Franklin was struggling to get his lungs moving again, leaving his injured lower left leg resting idly against the ground.

Jamie whipped both his arms at Franklin, elasticizing everything but his hands after he had contracted his muscles. His open hands flew forward at the ends of his stretching arms, easily grabbing the soundlessly gasping Franklin because he was only six feet away. Jamie clenched his left hand over Franklin's right ribs, in the fabric of his shirt, and he grabbed Franklin's left wrist with his right hand. Jamie immediately reverted his arms to normal, bracing himself against the ground with his right foot and left knee so that Franklin was pulled toward him, instead of the reverse. The technique actually worked even better than usual, since Jamie's center of gravity was lower because he was down on one knee.

Gasping for breath, Franklin sent the green aura of his power surging down his arm, towards his wrist and Jamie's hand. Jamie had anticipated that though, and let go just before the chartreuse wave reached him, his arm returning to full solidity at the same time. Jamie thrust his arm forward even as he let go of Franklin's wrist, slamming his palm into the upper left side of Franklin's chest, just beneath his shoulder, while he yanked on Franklin's shirt over his ribs at the same time.

Franklin's upper left side reeled backwards while the middle of his right side was pulled forward; he was thrown off balance and spun around simultaneously. He fell into Jamie, gasping out a cry of pain as he barked his tailbone off Jamie's upraised knee and flailing for balance or purchase as he slid sideways, into Jamie's hold.

Jamie threw his left arm around Franklin's neck, elasticizing his whole arm and grabbing his left wrist with his right hand. Jamie yanked his left arm around behind Franklin's head, stretching it to wrap around the back of Franklin's neck as his right forearm slid over the top of his head. Franklin felt the tension of Jamie's elastic arm constricting around his neck and reached up to grab Jamie's arm, his face, anything part of Jamie he could touch and send his power into...

..But it was too late. Jamie rotated his right wrist as he finished pulling his left arm across the front of Franklin's neck, wrapping the narrow band of his stretched wrist around the fingers of his right hand. Like anything elastic, Jamie's flesh grew thinner as it stretched, making it akin to rope or even mere clothesline as he coiled it over his other hand. Franklin's ability did indeed make Jamie frictionless once more, but that didn't matter when his slickened body was already in position. His arm was wrapped all the way around Franklin's neck and his wrist wrapped around his own other hand; it didn't matter how slippery the "ropes" of his flesh were when they were already coiled tightly in position.

Franklin kicked and flailed, but Jamie just held on grimly, knowing the enemy Molecular would pass out from strangulation in short order. Making Jamie adhesive certainly wouldn't help Franklin any, so his powers were useless, and he couldn't physically harm Jamie's elastic body. Jamie wouldn't hold on long enough to kill him, not even close, but even if Franklin recovered from his strangulation quickly, he'd still be helpless in the meanwhile, and Jamie could finish taking him down if he had to.

After burying Fulfer in her own ice, Chris turned back to check on Malcolm, realizing that their portion of the fight had switched member counts from MX:3, BadGuys:2 to MX:1, BadGuys:2 when Kevin and Lexa slipped away to find the Psi-guy. Sure, Lexa would be right back, as long as no other part of the fight tied her up first, but that still left Chris outnumbered.

Sure enough, Malcolm had gotten most if not all of his breath back and was just starting to get to his feet when Chris glanced his direction. Figuring it would take Fulfer at least a moment or two to pick herself up, Chris decided to risk it and hustled over to Malcolm. He didn't run because he didn't have the breath for it yet, but he hurried, wanting to re-engage the Mineral Molecular before he reactivated his power. Chris didn't have enough oxygen in his system for another concussive shout yet, and he wouldn't regain his breath if he kept running or had to engage in all-out hand-to-hand combat, but he did still have an ace up his sleeve.

Chris couldn't shout yet, but he could still use his sonic control powers to mute the sounds of his approach, to make a sneak attack. He swung wide as he hustled over to Malcolm, changing his angle of approach to come at the husky man from the rear.

Looking up from where she had just nearly knocked Brennan out with a flying side-view car mirror, Shaunna saw Chris' stealthy but speedy gait, and Malcolm clearly unaware he was about to be attacked as he considered Jamie and Franklin.

"MALCOLM!" she shouted across half the parking lot. "Behind You!"

Chris swore under his breath as Malcolm spun to face him, instinctively converting himself back into granite at his fellow Link's warning. Chris increased his pace to a sprint for one step, lifting his second leg into a flying kick as he sprang off his striding foot.

Malcolm's power increased his weight around ten times its norm; he drew the additional mass from his environment, just like Jesse did. The difference was that Malocolm's power reached into the earth to find bedrock to pattern his molecular structure after, so he transformed from the feet up. Chris' flying kick connected with Malcolm's chest before the white crackle of his power reached it; Malcolm went sprawling backward as Chris fell to the ground.

Chris had pushed to make his leaping kick; he had thrown all of the momentum he had barely managed to build up to make the distance, leaving him little to adjust his landing with. He had also burned most of what little breath he had regained, making him slightly light-headed as he tried to land. Knowing it wasn't going to go well, Chris allowed himself to go lax, twisting just enough to take the impact on his back and arms as he slapped out of the fall, absorbing it with his leather biker jacket. They both scrambled to their feet, Chris raising his fists as he held his position and carefully filled his lungs and Malcolm completing his Molecular transformation. Chris had used his impact with the ground to deliberately empty his lungs, making it easier to draw a full breath as he rose, knowing he would need it. Malcolm contemplated Chris' motionless form for a moment, then smiled, spreading his arms and lowering his stance in preparation to charge, knowing he was close enough he could leap to tackle Chris if Chris tried to spring away.

Seeing Malcolm make his decision, Chris waited one instant for his opponent to commit himself fully to the action, then screamed.

Chris' shriek slammed into Malcolm, catching him by surprise just as he was shifting his balance, making him stumble slightly more from his flinch than from the concussive impact of Chris' power. Face creasing with concentration as he poured on the noise, Chris shifted the frequency of his cry to match the resonance of Malcolm's granite body. Luckily for Chris, Malcolm paused, confused by the vibratory sensation coursing through his body. Chris hadn't regained enough breath to shatter solid rock, not that he would do that to a person anyway, but he was taking the gamble that Malcolm's body would revert to normal if his stone structure became too stressed. If Malcolm had chosen to press his attack anyway, Chris would have had to spring aside and been left breathless versus a literal brick of an opponent.

Fortunate though Chris had been that Malcolm chose caution when Chris surprised him, Chris was equally surprised if not more when Raygoza chose to reveal his presence. Chris was unfortunate in the fact that Raygoza was the rogue GSAgent Gravity Elemental.

In the blink of an eye, Chris was thrown nearly five hundred feet up into the air.

"How're those ribs, Big Girl?" Shalimar panted as Janessa attempted to charge her once more, but rapid movement caused her too much internal pain. Shalimar grinned, knowing her expression would only provoke the Link more, and smacked Janessa's blows aside as the Arachnid Feral tried to strike her.

Janessa hissed with rage, her mandibles spread wide and her brow lowering angrily over her larger, humanoid eyes. Although she looked and thought like an arachnid to a large degree, she still had human intelligence and recognized what Shalimar was doing. Adjusting her attacks, Janessa switched from broad sweeps that were easily knocked off course to swift, short jabs with her pincer-claw fingers. Shalimar was more than competent enough a combatant to block those strikes as well, but it took more of her concentration and skill to do so. She was caught by surprise when Janessa suddenly twisted her forearm against Shalimar's blocking fist, reaching sideways with her clawed hand to seize Shalimar's wrist.

Shalimar cried out in pain as Janessa's talons sliced through the skin of her arm. She attempted to twist against Janessa's thumb in an attempt to break free, but Janessa merely jerked her sideways, throwing Shalimar off balance and keeping her from getting the footing she needed to escape.

Janessa thrust one knee forward, intending to gore Shalimar with the curving spike that topped her exoskeletal kneecap, returning the abdominal injury in kind, with interest. Shalimar managed to deflect Janessa's knee with her own, but Janessa's free arm swooped in to curl behind Shalimar's knee before she could either close her leg all the way or return it to the ground. Janessa hefted Shalimar into the air, causing her to cry out as her body was pulled taut, her entrapped wrist bleeding all the more profusely.

Shalimar knew she only had a split-second before the spider woman injured her terribly, maybe even fatally if things went bad, or if those mandible fangs were venemous, as they probably were... Looking up at Janessa's sneering and inhuman face, Shalimar knew she couldn't go for the woman's eyes, even though she had a hand free—from the angle she was at, she would have to reach right past those fangs. Janessa's sneer widened into her hideous grin once more as she met Shalimar's eyes past her own mandibles; she was drawing out the moment, savoring Shalimar's helpless distress.

Snarling in response to Janessa's superior attitude, Shalimar's eyes flashed golden as they converted to feline slits, the fingers of her free hand curling into a clawed position. She couldn't reach Janessa's eyes between her sneering brow and snapping mandibles...

..But Janessa had three more eyes on each side of her head. Shalimar's arm hooked up in an arc, her thumb unable to reach but the nails of her first two fingers piercing two of the lesser eyes on Janessa's forehead and temple. Janessa shrieked, hurling Shalimar away as she staggered back a few paces, her left hand clamped over the side of her head.

Shalimar smiled grimly as she landed, tearing the liner out of her jacket and quickly wrapping and tying it around her left wrist. Glancing up to make sure Janessa had not immediately recovered and decided to charge Shalimar in rage despite her injuries, Shalimar gasped in surprise. Janessa was not charging...

..She had ducked aside as columns of flame streaked past her, setting the asphalt around Shalimar ablaze.

Brennan tried to shake his head, stunned and confused, but he immediately held still when his head stridently informed him that it most certainly did not want to be moved like that. Besides the left side of his head throbbing in what Brennan could recognize as a mild concussion, his right shoulder and hip were also voicing complaints quite loudly, particularly his shoulder.

Hearing Shauna call out for Malcolm to look out behind himself, Brennan's memory cleared, and he realized he had a chance while she was distracted. Their powers were flip sides of the same coin, electricity and magnetism being directly related physical forces. She seemed to have a great degree of control over her side of the equation, manipulating the electromagnetic fields of both herself and her environment to foil his related powers. Brennan himself tended to unleash blasts of his element, bolts of electricity to strike targets or short circuit electronics, even propel himself into the sky with. . .but he had the ability to manipulate electrical fields, as well.

Lying where he had fallen, pretending to be much more stunned than he was, Brennan reached out to the air around him with his power once more. The air was still ionized, all the more so after the titanic blast he had sent ripping through it and Shauna had redirected through it twice more, and she had manipulated more magnetic fields after that, to strike him with the car's debris. Brennan linked up to those ions with his power, not to fuel another blast, but to manipulate the resultant electrical field, like he had done to keep Jesse from phasing out entirely when he had absorbed Black Ops nerve gas or to keep the plastic explosive collar around Megan Morrison's neck from exploding.

Of course, on those occasions he wasn't operating in pain and with a concussion, but the adrenaline of a combat situation was certainly a running theme, and he had only felt a little better after Emma restabilized his mind with his powers. Concentrating despite the pain, wincing as the the throbbing in his skull grew steadily, Brennan waited for Shauna to come closer. She had used up her aura's super-charge from his blast to deck him with the car parts, so she would have to get close enough to drain him again if he didn't shoot at her. . .playing near-dead should work...

"Hey..." Shauna said sharply, frowning with suspicion as she felt the ions in the air around them changing. "..What are you doing?" she questioned, stepping closer. She passed a magenta-glowing hand over Brennan's sprawled body, but she couldn't feel any charges coalescing. . .he was only flickering with energy, apparently randomly.

"Hah," Shauna scoffed, lowering her hand but maintaining its aura, the magenta light also shining from her eyes as she smirked. "Gabriel was right. You are a waste!"

Shauna gasped in surprise as Brennan lunged, twisting at the waist and hurling himself upward to seize her glowing hand with his own crackling one. He grunted in surprised pain as the sudden motion nearly made him black out, but he managed to clench his hand around Shauna's wrist. Giving up on moving, Brennan simply concentrated on his power, keeping the electrostatic field around them crackling randomly, forcing it to remain random so that Shauna couldn't organize it into a coherent field to manipulate metal with.

He had intended to block her abilities with his own and use his superior size and training to physically defeat her, but that plan was on hold thanks to his concussion. Instead, Brennan focused on draining her electromagnetic aura into the random electrostatic field around them, nullifying both of their abilities. Shauna was uninjured, but he was twice her size. Brennan simply wrapped his other arm around the Link's knees and leaned into her, toppling Shauna with a squawk. She was so surprised at his turning the tables of their powers on her that she only partially caught herself as she fell; Brennan felt it was poetic justice when she cried out upon her own abrupt impact with the blacktop.

Lexa knew she didn't have any time; she wasn't just a sitting duck, she was a dead duck contorted into a ridiculous posture with her spine bent over backward. Knowing Fulfer or any of her companions could finish her off any second, Lexa desperately tried something with her powers she had never done before.

Frowning in concentration, Lexa attempted to use facets of all her Elemental abilities simultaneously. Breathing deeply, her body flared with light, as it did when she turned invisible, but it was not the corona of her light-cloak activating. Channeling her strobe ability into the flare of light coming from her body, the glow was significantly brighter than simply warping the ambient light around herself. Her eyes squeezing shut and her breathing intensifying as Lexa tapped the last of her powers, she shifted the light radiating out of her body from blinding visible light to the coherent beams of her laser ability.

The laser aura strobing from Lexa's body melted through all of the spears of ice Fulfer had surrounded her with, leaving Lexa free to move. Straightening up properly and turning to face the direction the blue frost matrixes had come from, Lexa saw Fulfer staring in surprise. Fulfer's hands began glowing blue once more as she hastily attempted to pin Lexa down again; Lexa slapped the fingers of both hands together, pointed at Fulfer's head and snapping off a strobe before the former GSAgent could hurl her power. Fulfer cried out in surprise and pain as she was blinded, her power fizzling as her focus was shattered.

Lexa calmly and quietly moved up behind Fulfer and knocked her out with a hammerblow to the base of her neck. Even as Fulfer slumped to the ground, Lexa's head snapped up at the bizarre sound of Chris' sonic blast dopplering away as he was flung up into the sky. Blinking in surprise, she noticed a man standing in mid-air twenty feet above Eloy's Diner, with his hand raised and his head facing the sky as he watched Chris fall upwards.

Frowning, Lexa realized Raygoza was the same one who had been pinning Owen to the ground when they had all arrived to back him and Jamie up, before they had been captured by the GSA on the night her team had arrived in California. She couldn't be sure with the distance, but his pose was the same, and really, how many Gravity Elementals could the GSA have running around? She could never hit him with a strobe at that distance, but Owen had said he'd shot the guy in the leg, then snapped most of his ribs; he could only have just gotten out of the hospital, could maybe use his powers —like dropping the Mineral Molecular on Eve's car, obviously— but he wouldn't be up to the physical strain of hand to hand combat, which was why he was floating high above them.

Grinning, Lexa carefully took aim with her first two fingers and shot Raygoza in the leg with a laser. He cried out in surprise and pain, his shout escalating into terror as his concentration was shattered and he fell twenty feet to crash into the roof of Eloy's Diner. Lexa winced, hoping he had made impact over Eloy's office or the back storeroom, and not over the diner proper where patrons would wonder what was going on. Either way, with his ribs in the condition they were, Raygoza ought to be out of the fight, at least.

"Okay, everything's set," Davis called out to Bishop as he strode into the lounge area, grinning over-enthusiastically at Eve. "I erased everything back to the point where I sent the Fox Feral image over the door camera, and the security system won't start recording again for another fifteen minutes," he reported, grinning back as Bishop nodded and smiled at him. "Knock her out and put her behind the desk where she was when we knocked, nobody'll ever know the difference. I implanted video of her taking the phone call in that chair, turned away from the camera so I didn't have to worry about trying to recreate a lip sync of her exact words," Davis continued as he circled around the sectional and recliner, coming to stand in front of Bishop as he smiled wickedly at Eve. "And the short circuit is set just like you said, blow out the TV here and short out her computer there at the same time, after the main door cycles shut."

"Implanted video. . .you made me see and hear Ketch on the monitor, when you were outside," Eve said with a frown, realizing what had happened. "..You're a Telecyber!" she accused Davis, realizing the shine of his eyes when he had entered was similar to Eloy's at full power, just yellow instead of blue.

"Such a brilliant girl," Bishop commented idly in the background as Davis laughed excitedly, the emotional instability side effect of immersing his consciousness in emotionless machines becoming more obvious now that Eve knew what she was seeing.

Frowning with worry that Davis had Psionically hacked his way into Haven's systems and copied the New Mutant database, Eve leaped to her feet, shoving her hands into the pockets of her labcoat. The thought of the database had prompted her memory; John Bishop wasn't an empath or a clairsentient, he was the most powerful precognitive on file. . .and one of Ashlocke's Links. She couldn't let him get away with the names and abilities of every New Mutant on file; there was no telling what Ashlocke's deranged followers might do with such information. Grinning savagely, Davis raised his fists and stepped forward into the middle of the seating area before the lounge's big-screen TV, practically bouncing with anticipation.

"I did say you shouldn't excite him..." Bishop murmured quietly from where he sat in the foremost recliner, but the anticipatory smile on his face suggested that everything was going to plan. Powerful precognition was certainly useful for planning.

Eve withdrew her hands from her pockets as she dashed forward and Davis moved to intercept her, sweeping her left hand back behind herself in a low counterbalancing fencer's pose, her right wrist snapping to the side to extend her collapsible rapier's blade. She flicked her sword back into line with Davis as he approached, jabbing a warning feint at his face to make him jerk to a stop, then extending her arm and whipping her hand in an arc to slash her blade across Davis' throat. She didn't want to kill him, but Eve knew that unless she could capture both Davis and Bishop and either neutralize their abilities or make sure Davis had lost his access to her records, she had no choice. And she didn't think she had much chance of subduing them both.

Davis backpedaled out of the reach of Eve's weapon, then stepped back in and attempted to kick the rapier out of her hand. Eve hop-skipped backward in the shuffling step of a fencer, raising her wrist just enough to lift her blade out of the path of Davis' foot, then lowered it again as she stepped forward once more. She moved like a spring, evading Davis' foot with a single movement backward, then reversed the move to lunge forward at him, stabbing with the blade's point. Davis parried the blade away from his chest with the back of his forearm, throwing Eve's rapier out of line but receiving a shallow cut across his arm for the effort.

Eve twirled her sword with the circular motion Davis had guided it into, re-orienting it to point downward as she skip-dashed forward again, lunging forward with the blade to stab Davis in his left thigh. He cried out in surprised pain, and Eve jerked her sword back a mere foot, stabbing it forward again to jab into Davis' other thigh. He grunted in further pain and started to hunch over slightly, spreading his knees to widen his thighs so that Eve would have to change techniques to strike them again. Davis also brought his arms in close to his body, one across his stomach to keep her from stabbing him in the gut and the other hand before his face, its forearm shielding his heart and solar plexus.

Frowning, Eve realized Davis' intention. . .he was unarmed but far stronger than she was, planning to intercept her next attack and accept the damage to one of his arms while he used the other to disarm her, or perhaps punch her out. Davis didn't realize Eve was almost as good a martial artist as she was a fencer, but she didn't want to take the risk. Her rapier allowed Eve to keep an attacker at a distance; if a fight moved into hand-to-hand, it was too easy for an attacker to grapple her. Most thugs, goons, and nearly all New Mutants were stronger than Eve, meaning they would have the upper hand if a conflict moved to infighting.

Besides that, Davis was offering her another target, one that would surely put him in enough pain for her to land a killing blow.

Eve took only a half-step back, simultaneously shifting her weight to reach forward in a deep lunge, thrusting forward with the point of her rapier. . .directly into Davis' groin.

Bishop laughed at the surprise on Eve's face as Davis lunged forward in turn, her supple and thin rapier bowing severely, not penetrating beyond Davis' pants.

"Sorry, Bitch, I believe in wearing a cup!" Davis snarled, still grinning savagely as he grabbed Eve's right fist around her sword's handle with his left hand, punching her in the wrist with the points of the knuckles of his right hand. The move traumatized the tendons in Eve's wrist and made her fingers spasm, letting Davis wrest the blade from her grip. He tossed it behind himself, grinning as he reached for Eve with his right hand.

Eve shrieked a piercing scream in Davis' face for a split second, stunning him with surprise at the completely unexpected action. She raised her right knee and fired her foot out sideways, smashing the heel of her shoe into the side of Davis' knee. There was a popping sound, and Davis cried out in pain; Eve dove into a somersault, rolling out of the center of the seating area.

Snarling in fury, Davis whirled toward Eve and the mega-screen TV behind her, thrusting his arm out and pale yellow light blazing from his eyes. Eve tried to shift her stance to bring her left arm to bear, but she'd had to dive onto her right shoulder to roll past Davis, her left arm not in position...

..Eve gasped as she heard the television switch itself on, its sixty-inch screen already crackling with static electricity. Eve threw herself sideways into a cartwheel, instinctively kicking her feet wide as she flipped upside-down, her legs nealy parallel to the floor and ceiling as a bolt of electricity zapped off the TV and across the lounge area.

"Carefully, Davis..." Bishop called out in admonishment. "We need the television intact later, you know," he chuckled as Eve landed on her feet once more, wanting to back away from Davis but also wanting to move forward to retrieve her sword, not to mention trying to keep an eye on Bishop at the same time. "..Use something smaller that could conceivably be missing, like her phone," he commented idly.

Eve's brilliant mind flashed through possibilities as she considered the fact Bishop was not just a precognitive, but an extremely powerful one. She had been holding her phone in her left hand ever since she sprang into action, hiding it behind herself with her fencer's stance and then with the angle of her roll. Bishop probably knew she had it, even if he hadn't spotted it in her hand as she awkwardly held it flush to the carpet to cartwheel under Davis' Telecyber blast. She had planned to use it. . .was Bishop helping her do so? ..Was that why he wasn't also attacking, just sitting in the background?

Snarling, Davis narrowed his yellow-glowing eyes at Eve and spread his fingers at her. Still unsure of Bishop's motivations but knowing she was out of time and nearly out of options, Eve hurled her phone at Davis even as his eyes flashed brighter. Eve's phone overloaded as it reached him, exploding in his face and sending Davis staggering back, crying out in surprise and pain.

Eve dove into another cartwheel, seizing the handle of her rapier as her hand landed on it, and twisted into a roundoff to evade Davis' lunging grab. She hurled herself into a backflip as Davis spun on her, trying to sweep her legs out from beneath her and surprised by her airborne flip. He was still rising from the sweep kick as Eve landed; she stretched forward in a perfect lunge position, piercing Davis' chest with her rapier and skewering his heart.

Davis' knees gave out and he collapsed, falling backward to slide off of Eve's sword as the yellow light faded from his surprised eyes.

Josh's eyelids fluttered as he blinked back to awareness.

He had realized what Nakamoto was going to do when the man taunted him about being heat-proof. . .even as Nakamoto was throwing his thermal charges at the cars' gas tanks, Josh was moving. He knew that leaping away was his only chance, and not a good one at that. He had spun and jumped onto the nose of one car, landing in a crouch and springing away, using the car's shocks to boost his leap that much more...

..the concussion wave of the cars' simultaneous explosions had slammed into Josh, propelling him a bit farther but also stunning him. He had fallen gracelessly to the ground, banging a knee and tearing up yet another pair of jeans, but he was relatively unhurt.

Looking around as he picked himself up off the ground, Josh snorted in disgust with Nakamoto. The idiot might have been heat proof and impressed with himself for thinking of a way to almost outwit Josh, but he hadn't counted on the fact that he himself wasn't concussion proof. Squinting into the flames distrustfully, Josh could make out Nakamoto's unconscious form collapsed between the two cars.

Serves him right, ass— Josh thought to himself, then his attention was wrenched aside by the sound of Chris' sonic blast. He turned to see Chris shouting at the Mineral Elemental who had smashed Eve's car, starting the fight. Josh began to move in their direction, knowing that Chris wouldn't shatter the man's stone form, even if he could...

..Josh blinked in shock as Chris rocketed upwards into the air.

Erra had charged Owen after she threw Tonio aside, feinting with a snapkick before slashing at his face with her nails when Owen ducked slightly to block her kick. Owen merely straightened up again, leaning his head back out of her reach, snarling in ursine irritation to demonstrate how unimpressed with her he was.

In a surprising move, Erra leaped into Owen, twisting into a forward flip even as she propelled her body up and forward. Startled, Owen reached to intercept her, catch her and throw her away, but Erra had known he would do that. She shot both feet out to her sides as she flipped upside-down, kicking Owen in the wrists and thrusting his arms away. Arching her back, Erra swung her right fist upwards, backhanding Owen in the gut, and punched forward with her left hand, intending to sock Owen in the groin.

"Oof!" Owen gasped as his arms were knocked wide and he was hit in the abs. He backpedaled a step in surprise and doubled over slightly to keep the wind from being truly knocked out of him; that slight motion was the only thing that kept Erra from punching him in the gonads as she landed in a crouch. "Who do you think you are, Xena?" he snarled with annoyance, blocking her follow-up punch with one arm and thrusting his opposite leg forward in a piston kick at her lowered torso.

"Need any help?" Jamie called out to Owen as he jogged up to them, hanging in the background but letting Owen know he was there if needed. Jamie had simply threaded the fingers of both of Franklin's hands together behind his back after he passed out, then tied his wrists together with the entire length of both the man's shoelaces. Even if he rendered them frictionless with his power, Franklin still wouldn't be able to get them off. Jamie had then taken Franklin's belt and put it around his knees, cinching it tight and forcing the prong through the leather to secure it in a new eyehole. Jamie was confident Franklin wasn't going anywhere, even if he did wake up.

"Nah, I got this," Owen muttered as Erra threw herself to one side to evade his kick, spinning back to attempt to hook her foot around Owen's ankle and sweep his leg out from under him. Owen merely shifted his weight onto his kicking leg as he set it back down, raising his other foot and twitching it slightly to let Erra's foot slide past. "You could make sure WolfBoy doesn't get back up," Owen suggested as he turned to keep facing Erra, snarling a smile at her when she hissed angrily at him in frustration.

Erra snarled as she sprang forward at Owen, arms flailing in rapid slashes and punches at his face and torso, one knee and then the other foot thrusting and scything at him as he blocked or twisted to evade her blows. Owen brushed aside her crescent kick with the back of one forearm; she sprang straight up into the air off her standing leg, snapping it forward in a kick to Owen's groin as she punched at his face with both fists.

Owen just managed to twist enough to take the kick on his inner thigh instead of directly in the groin, but he still flinched as the side of her boot brushed roughly against him on the recoil. The flash of discomfort wasn't enough to truly distract him, though, and Owen seized each of Erra's wrists in turn as she tried to punch him. He transferred both of her slender wrists to one of his enormous hands, then socked her in the gut before she could try to kick him again.

It was hard for Erra to steel her abs when she was dangling by her arms in Owen's grip, and his punch knocked the wind out of her despite her efforts; Owen was just too strong. He hefted her higher into the air, reaching forward to grab her by the knee with his free hand. Owen hoisted Erra up with that grip, so that she was lying horizontally in mid-air, then flipped her over so that she was facing the ground as she writhed, trying to break free. He shoved her downward with both arms, raising his knee into her stomach while she was still reeling from the mid-air spin, knocking all of the breath out of her. Owen left Erra twitching on the ground and struggling to even draw breath as he looked up at the sound of Chris' sonic blast falling up into the air.

"CHRIS!" Jamie cried out in shock as he stared upward, then followed Owen as he sprinted over to where Malcolm was laughing.

Owen was already in Feral mode from fighting Charlie, Tonio, and Erra, so he heard Lexa's stage-whispered plan as he charged Malcolm: "Startle him, then point his head at me, don't look!"

Owen bellowed a massive roar of ursine fury as he overran Malcolm, intercepting the punch the Mineral Molecular threw at him and using it to redirect the Link's momentum. Owen wrapped an arm around Malcolm as he spun the Molecular into his arms, then snarled as he exerted his massive Ursine Feral strength and hefted Malcolm into the air before slamming him face-first into the pavement.

Dropping to one knee, Owen grabbed Malcolm's head and lifted it off the ground, bending the Link's back in reverse and physically pointing his face at Lexa as he squeezed his green-brown bear eyes tightly shut.

Malcolm's eyes were wide with surprise and confusion, briefly intimidated by Owen's furious bellow, then thrown around so abruptly he had yet to get his bearings. Lexa snapped the fingers of her left hand, striking a tiny orangish-yellow spark, just enough to catch Malcolm's bewildered attention and make him look at her despite his worry over Owen holding his head. As soon as his eyes tracked the movement of her hand, Lexa slapped her hands together to trigger a massive strobe in Malcolm's face. The pain and added surprise was too much for Malcolm; his concentration was shattered and his body reverted to flesh.

Owen flung him forward to slam his face and chest into the parking lot, then pounded him in the middle of his back with one massive fist, driving the wind out of Malcolm after he had been knocked unconscious.

Josh had run up to join them as Owen took care of Malcolm, already on his cellphone as Lexa also approached.

"C'mon, c'mon, Chris—stop screaming and answer your phone!" he muttered, staring up at Chris' tiny form high up in the sky, his eyes in their pale jade Feral Mode as he tried to see Chris respond.

Chris was startled when he was suddenly flung away from Malcolm, but his confusion quickly shifted to fear and then escalated to outright panic as he realized he wasn't flying away from Malcolm, he was going straight up.

Being rather acrophobic, it was Chris' worst nightmare come true. He was falling upwards, like gravity had been reversed somehow.

His power blast had already petered out with his surprise, but Chris simply hauled in a new breath and screamed again, this time in complete terror. He saw the gray rectangle of the parking lot of Eloy's Diner receding, and surely it wasn't supposed to be that small? He could see the blocky shape of the diner's roof, the AC unit on top; it hadn't looked like this when Eve landed the Double Helix on it the night the New York team had joined them. . .ogod ogod ogod, he could see all the neighboring rooftops, too, the rooftops of the whole block, the whole damn neighborhood, he was so freaking high up, and still going...

Chris stopped screaming as the panic set in, his breathing pattern simply shifting to hyperventilation. As the roaring in his ears from the internal pressure of his scream faded, Chris' panic nearly set in all over again at the fact he was so damn high he could barely hear the city traffic below him...

..Then his phone rang again.

"CHRIS!" Josh shouted when Chris finally answered his phone. "Chris— Chris, dude, SHUT UP! Chris, we're going to catch you, but you have to slow your fall down." Josh's brows lowered angrily as he frowned up into the sky at his falling friend. "Yes, you can, shut up and listen to me; we don't have time! You have to concentrate; as you get closer to the ground, you have to shout at it. In as tight a beam as you can; your sonic blast is concussive, man, it'll try to propel you back up! Probably won't be enough, but it'll reduce your speed. We'll do the rest."

Owen was impressed with Josh's idea, but it sounded to him like Chris was considerably less so, to judge by the panicked stream of words he could hear coming from Josh's phone. Josh continued to glare up at Chris' distant form, his glower firming into a grimace.

"Chris, we don't have time for this. You can try, and it MIGHT work, or you can be a giant midget wuss, give up, and definitely die. Try not scream at Jamie; you don't want to compress your safety net before you hit it."

Josh snapped his phone shut and clipped it back to his pocket as he turned to Jamie and thrust out his hand.

"Gimme your gum," he said.

"Huh?" Jamie asked, scrunching his face up in confusion.

"NOW, Gardoit, No Time!" Josh snapped, jerking his hand emphatically. Jamie raised a perplexed eyebrow, but he leaned forward and spat the large wad of gum in his mouth into Josh's hand. "Ew," Josh muttered, then winced as he placed the wad of well-chewed gum between his teeth and bit it in half, pulling the half between his fingers away and glaring in annoyance at the trailing strings it left behind, even as he took care not to touch the half in his mouth with anything other than his teeth.

Josh tipped his head forward and opened his jaw to let his half of the gum wad fall into his other hand.

"Here," he said, handing the first half to Owen, who blinked, stupefied, but took it anyway. "For your ears," Josh explained as he tore his own wad in half and started stuffing his ears shut with it. "We're going to be standing at ground zero of Chris' screech, and it's gonna be noisy. Stretch Jamie between the lights on Eloy's and the streetlight, high as you can, and tie him down, with a slipknot. . .he won't be able to hold with the impact," Josh explained, then grabbed Jamie's wrist. "Full ragdoll, Buddy," Josh told him, and Jamie nodded his understanding, rendering himself completely elastic.

Thinking quickly, Jamie grabbed his own foot and stuffed it through Owen's belt as Josh leaped across the parking lot with Jamie's other hand, his arm stretching out behind Josh's leaping Feral form. Josh sprang past the downed enemy Ferals and where Brennan was struggling with Shauna, heading for the utility pole at the rear corner of the parking lot, where the alley that ran behind Eloy's Diner joined the side street. He sprang twenty feet up into the air, grabbing hold of the pole's utility access brackets, and quickly tied Jamie's wrist in a slipknot around one, with a loop that could easily be pulled out later.

Owen had calmly popped Jamie's gum in his mouth and chewed it a bit, then made a ridiculous face as he rolled it into a ball with his tongue and bit it in half. Spitting the two pieces of gum into his hand, Owen had pushed them into his ears, then wisely gone to the front corner of Eloy's Diner, diagonally opposite the pole Josh had moved to. Owen leaped up onto the roof of Eloy's Diner, leaning out over its corner to tie Jamie's ankle around the strut that supported the sodium lamp on the front corner of the building.

Josh and Owen both leaped back to where Jamie's body was suspended fifteen feet off the ground, elongated strangely between his stretched arm and leg. They each leaped up to grab one of Jamie's remaining limbs, then sprang away again, attaching them to the sodium light at the rear of Eloy's Diner and the streetlight at the far front corner of the parking lot.

Chris tried to center himself, forcing himself to breathe slowly and deeply as his momentum slowly bled off, the speed of his rising body gradually diminishing. He knew he had only just hung up with Josh, that he had actually only been airborne for less than twenty seconds, but it felt like eons.

The last of Chris' upward momentum was overcome by gravity's pull, and he began falling back down. Ochrist, a falling object accelerates at the rate of 32 feet per second... he thought to himself, trying to distract his mind from the panic raving at its edges as the city of LA below him began rapidly growing closer. ..Damn, that's all I remember. I can't do that kind of math in my head...

Chris watched the parking lot far below him quickly become a lot less far below, watching little blobs of color that he knew were his friends resolve themselves into a tiny little Owen and Josh jumping around the growing rectangle of Eloy's parking lot. It was weird, like one of those dramatic opening shots of a movie that gradually panned into the first scene. . .but this 'gradual' was proceeding at a pretty damned good clip, not to mention the movie was in full surround, with wind in his face, even, it being Real Life and all...

Forcing his breath out in a steady exhalation and drawing it back in smoothly, despite how he wanted to tremble, Chris carefully filled his lungs to maximum capacity as the ground approached...

..and screamed.

As the two Ferals returned to where Jamie was suspended above, Chris' shout pierced through the air and slammed into the asphalt next to Owen. Looking up, the two of them saw that they had done a good job of positioning Jamie over where Chris had been standing when Raygoza had reversed gravity on him; Chris was spread-eagled in the air, like a skydiver, above where Jamie's torso was stretched. The impact of his power-enhanced voice was to Owen's right, just past part of Jamie's left ribcage.

Owen spread his feet into a wide horse stance, lowering himself into so deep a crouch he was almost sitting on the ground, cupping his hands together in a stirrup shape with the backs of his fingers flat against the parking lot. Nodding, Josh carefully stepped onto Owen's hands, placing the balls of his feet over the middles of Owen's palms.

Crouching low, his knees alongside Owen's biceps, Josh rested his hands on Owen's shoulders, both of them staring up as Chris descended, wincing against the sound of his powered scream pummeling into the ground next to them. Neither of them were a mathematical whiz like Jamie or Jesse, nor geniuses who could do the necessary calculations automatically like Adam or Eve, but they were both Ferals who knew both their own and each others abilities, used to working together and with an implicit trust as Pack. Josh knew how high he could leap, Owen knew how high he could throw Josh, and they automatically worked together to figure out the angles they would need to throw and leap at to intercept Chris.

Working in sync, Josh didn't even need to tense his grip on Owen's shoulders in a signal at the right moment; Owen's muscles were already tensing to heave himself upright and thrust his arms up before himself, flinging Josh into the sky. Josh extended his legs at the same time, straightening his upper body to springboard himself off Owen's hands and up through the air to meet Chris in mid-fall some fifty feet above the ground.

Chris' world had narrowed down to a single act, a single point of focus, tightening his scream on that spot past Jamie, next to Owen.

Actually, it hadn't narrowed down at all. It was friggin' HUGE, and barreling right at him; he could see it rushing closer, hear the sounds of the city as white noise even past his scream, sense all of those sounds with his power, crushing in around him– –or maybe that was the panic, overwhelming, made him want to scream, like a crazy person, hysterical—except wait, he was already screaming, had to, not hysterically, but focused, on the spot by Owen, have to focus, tight, slow the fall, focus,Focus,FOCUS...

Chris could feel the strain his body was under from this crazy stunt; not just the effort to maintain a full-power scream for so long, with tighter focus than he had ever done before, but the strain of the fall, as well. He had reached his terminal velocity of something like 100 miles per hour before he was close enough to the ground to start his scream. Once he had, his scream had started pushing against the ground, just like Josh had said. . .nowhere near enough to propel Chris back up, probably not even if he hadn't been falling first, but it was slowing him, maybe even a lot—and his neck in particular was feeling the stress of being caught between the two forces.

Josh and Owen had subconsciously timed their maneuver quite well; Josh was actually just reaching the apex of his leap when Chris crashed into his arms. Owen's eyes widened as he saw Chris go limp and Josh struggle; he realized what had happened—Josh's upward momentum had just bled off as Chris reached him, so Josh was pretty much holding still in the instant before he began falling back down. He had basically just been hit by an object moving at whatever speed Chris was falling at, probably still a few dozen miles per hour, at least.

Fortunately, Josh seemed to have realized how he was going to be hit as he saw Chris approaching. Being airborne, there was nothing keeping Chris' momentum from simply propelling Josh into the ground; he only had to catch Chris in such a way that the initial impact didn't cause major damage. It had been a near thing, but Josh managed to collect Chris in his arms and twist to orient himself relative to Jamie in the second it took them to reach the height of the diner's roof.

Owen stepped forward as Josh and Chris were impacting Jamie's suspended torso, raising his arms overhead. He was worried about Jamie having to absorb the sudden impact of over 300 pounds traveling at dozens of miles per hour when he was already stretched close to his maximum distance. On the other hand, when he had tied Jamie's second foot to the rear light of Eloy's Diner, the tension hadn't seemed too extreme; maybe Jamie's evolution had increased his elasticity. No time to worry about it, regardless...

Josh had slammed into Jamie with the balls of his feet, his knees slightly bent and ready to let his legs compress with their impact against the ground, tensing his muscles to try to straighten them at the same time, counteracting some of their downward momentum. Owen had moved under Jamie at the same time, reaching up to cup his arms beneath the portion of Jamie's back Josh was crouching over, straining to lift against his and Chris' falling momentum even as he crouched in the same manner to bleed more of it off.

All of their efforts wouldn't have been nearly enough, if it weren't for Jamie.

Jamie was in agony, being stretched far too close to his limits even before his body had to attempt to absorb the strain of Josh and Chris' falling momentum. The possibility of his excessive stretching to trick Franklin increasing his suppleness seemed likely with the ease Josh and Owen had tying Jamie across the parking lot, but maintaining that stretch had quickly become painful. The stress made Jamie's power automatically extend into the poles and lights he was tied to, rendering them elastic as well. Josh, Owen, and Lexa had been staring up at Chris or scrambling in preparation to catch him; none of them noticed the telephone pole, streetlight, and sodium lights on Eloy's Diner bending over and stretching out to balance the tension as Jamie elasticized them.

The elasticization of Jamie's secondary ability was on overdrive, extending into everything he touched without his conscious control. It was even transmitting through the objects he had already rendered elastic, converting both Chris, in Josh's arms, and the parking lot beneath Owen's feet when Josh and Owen touched Jamie in their combination catch. Chris and Josh's falling momentum slammed into Owen, all three of them being squashed practically flat into Jamie and the stretchy asphalt beneath them. They literally bounced, Owen, Josh, and Chris snapping back to normal when they were no longer touching Jamie, all three of them tumbling to the ground as Jamie's stretched-taut body sprang back into the air above them, thrumming like the world's largest guitar string.

"Oh, shit," Josh muttered weakly as he lay sprawled on his back, Chris collapsed on top of him.

Owen rolled onto his hands and knees, blinking his greenish-brown Feral mode eyes as he shook his head, then sprang to his feet and leaped for Eloy's Diner, intending to untie Jamie, especially his injured left leg.

"Josh!" he barked as he moved, the sharpness of his voice seizing Josh's attention. "Get Jamie down; Eve said he shouldn't stretch other things!"

Josh blinked in surprise, nodding gratefully to Lexa as she pulled Chris off of him. He struggled to his feet, then leaped across the parking lot to the streetlight, springing up to its top and pulling Jamie's hand free. He sprang across the parking lot's far edge, noting Shalimar crawling in panic away from the bug-monster lady, who was screeching with one hand clapped to her head, but Jamie needed him first. Josh leaped up the utility pole again, standing on the maintenance brackets and holding onto Jamie's other hand after pulling it free. He waited for Owen to free Jamie's second foot and leap back down to the ground, then let go. Jamie's elastic leg had yanked Owen halfway back to Chris and Lexa before he landed; he caught the rest of Jamie's body when Josh let go of his wrist and Jamie snapped back into Owen's arms, reverting to normal and passing out.

Driving down Ventura Boulevard to Eloy's Diner, Anne Smith and Jesse Kilmartin were silent, even moreso than was normal for the two of them. Jesse believed the silence to be a result of his traumatizing Anne with the news of New Mutant expiry dates. . .and he was correct, to a degree. The fact that said trauma had provoked Anne into breaking several of her personal vows, inadvertently starting a chain reaction of worse events was the real reason she was silent, but that wasn't exactly something she could explain.

Jesse was contemplating opening his mouth and apologizing for upsetting Anne yet again, but he knew he shouldn't. He was aware his apologies were only making Anne more upset, presumably because she felt bad about losing her composure when she was supposed to have been helping Jesse with his own emotional upset, and it was all just very awkward. Jesse felt bad that things had worked out that way, uncomfortable with it in a way he couldn't even precisely define to himself, but he had a strong urge to make it right, somehow. He just didn't have any idea how that might be.

Anne's silent frown intensified as they got close to Eloy's Diner, and Jesse wondered if she was empathically sensing his disquiet and resolve to do something about it. Then Anne gasped, and Jesse knew it must be something else.

"What is it, Anne?" he asked, mildly alarmed by the look on her face.

"Trouble," she answered, gunning the engine of her little Honda and broadcasting the illusion of undercover blue and red lights flashing in the corners of her windshield, along with the sound of a siren. "..your team, at the diner," she finished, shooting down the street as traffic pulled over and out of their way.

Jesse gasped as the parking lot of Eloy's Diner came into view, two cars in one corner burning, another's front end smashed to bits, and Eve's poor Range Rover half-flattened. Josh was jumping down from a utility pole, Owen was carrying Jamie, who looked decidedly unconscious, and Jesse thought he could see Lexa crouched over someone else who was down. He didn't see Brennan or Shalimar, but there was a six foot Arachnid Feral holding the side of its head who was ducking out of sight behind a parked car. Jesse had a feeling there was even more going on; he just hadn't seen enough to make sense of it yet.

For the second time that day, Anne Smith's eyes shifted from their normal shades of liquid hazel-blue to jet black.

Jesse just stood there, staring at Anne's signature and its reflection in the side of her paperweight.

"Jesse?" Anne's voice asked tentatively, a moment or maybe several moments later. Jesse wasn't sure how long he had been standing there, staring in numb surprise. An idle portion of the back of his mind wondered if he was in shock. . .no, actually, there was no question of that, he totally was, but a tiny portion of his mind wondered if the emotional numbness of that shock was confusing Anne's empathy.

Emma's empathy. Anne Smith was Emma.
He could see it clearly, now. Her handwriting had bothered him, because it looked strangely familiar, when Jesse knew he had never seen Anne's writing before. It looked familiar because he had seen Emma's writing, lots of times. More than that, he was familiar with her signature. Emma had always signed her notes the same way, at a rising angle, underlined, with the capital of her name in cursive and the rest in block printing—except without lifting the pen. Jesse could distinctly remember Brennan teasing her when he discovered this, calling her "Enna" because block lower-case Ms written with a single stroke were indistiguishable from cursive Ns, both consisting of two "humps". Jesse had always wondered why Ns had one hump in printing and two in cursive, while Ms had two in printing and three in cursive, but English was just screwy like that.

Shalimar's handwriting was worse, randomly mixing block printed letters with cursive ones, with no rhyme or reason he had ever been able to detect as to which one she chose to use for each letter at any given time. At least Emma always wrote her lowercase As consistently in the cursive style. . .it wasn't that different from a printed A, the Latin alpha. Shalimar just seemed to switch back and forth with all of her letters, depending on which letter had preceeded it and would involve the least moving of the pen before writing the next. . .she claimed it made her writing "faster"; Adam had said it made her writing "illegible".

But that was surely Emma's signature; Jesse was absolutely positive of it. If the reflection were slanted to the right instead of the left, and the small loop of the E were the finishing curlicue of a capital cursive E, the A just a bit smaller, matching the Ms. . .it was Emma's signature.

"Jesse?" Anne's voice asked again, growing concerned. . .but not just concerned, alarmed.

Emma was alarmed, because she could sense Jesse's emotional reaction to seeing the truth, accepting the realization of the pieces falling into place. Emma had always had the power of illusions, tricking Allison into believing the GSA was there so she could slip away, making Jesse think Brennan had swatted the back of his head, causing Mark Griffin to perceive her as his dead girlfriend Megan. . .it was Emma.

His mouth still hanging open in shock, Jesse turned to face "Anne", but his brow was creasing into a frown as he moved. His jaw slowly closed as he stared at her, the shock in his eyes firming into anger, into betrayal and resentment.

Anne sighed as Jesse glared at her, the subtle illusion that slightly changed the shape of her face evaporating as she stopped devoting effort to it. Emma's eyes were even bigger than normal as she stared pleadingly into Jesse's, looking slightly more blue, but nowhere near so much as Jesse's. His lighter blue eyes blinked in vaguely surprised amusement as he recalled that Emma's eyes had seemed to be a different color almost every day, depending on what she wore and what color her hair was at the time. Currently, her hair was remaining the feathered cut and golden color he associated with "Anne". Jesse blinked again as he realized the cut was nearly the same as the one she had when he and Shalimar first met her, rescuing her from a squad of GSAgents, just a bit longer.

"What, the blonde's not an illusion, too, 'Anne'?" Jesse asked crossly, folding his arms across his chest and raising a sarcastic eyebrow as he waited for Emma to explain herself. She sniffed slightly, blinking away the tears in her eyes before they could form and giving Jesse an embarrassed hint of a smile that did little to make either of them feel any better or reassure the situation.

"This actually is my natural hair color," she murmured softly, her tone and posture embarrassed but her eyes pleading even while her expression was defiantly firm. "I dyed it since junior high because my eyebrows are so much darker. The light brunette matched better, and as I began to accept who I really was, red just felt—fun."

"Okay..." Jesse agreed acerbically, still in full sarcasm mode because he was afraid he'd start screaming at her and not be able to stop if he didn't channel his hurt into sniping. "..Was letting us all think you were dead also 'Fun', or is this all just a build up to the biggest 'Gotcha!' gag ever!?" he barked, his tone shifting from sarcasm to anger; he couldn't help it. Trying to shift back only combined the two, making his next comment all the more bitter and hurtful: "Yeah, Shal's gonna be SO damn surprised; hell, you'll probably shock one of her nine lives out of her!"

Emma blinked more rapidly, the tears welling in her eyes faster than she could suppress them. Jesse's own eyes were getting suspiciously wet, and he knew only some of the emotion flickering across Emma's face was because of the riot of conflicting emotional states ripping through him.

"I just hope she's got a few left, after," Jesse finished softly, his voice quiet and almost cool, but failing to be so because he was too wounded to pull it off, so it simply sounded of bitter disappointment, instead. "God, Emma..." Jesse muttered, turning away from her as he blinked away his own tears.

Emma stood motionless as Jesse heaved for breath and tried to regain control of his emotional state; two emotional upheavals in less than twenty-four hours was at least two more than he wanted. Emma merely stood her ground, waiting for Jesse to decide what form his reaction would take. She was equally upset, if for different reasons, but she had thought long and hard about what she had done before she had done it, and she had come to terms with it months and months ago. . .she had done what she had to, and she wasn't going to regret it now. Or not regret her actions any moreso than she already did, at least.

Jesse gradually grew. . .not calmer, but more restrained, anyway. He just couldn't understand why Emma would do what she had done in the first place, letting them all believe she was dead——after Adam's disappearance and inferred death, it was just too much. The logical portion of Jesse's mind knew Emma must have had her reasons and that they made sense to her, just as Adam and his reasons had to him, but the rest of Jesse just couldn't understand it. Turning his head just enough to face Emma over his shoulder, Jesse had to ask:

"Why?"
Emma blinked fresh tears away at the accusation in Jesse's voice.

She knew that emotionally, Jesse needed to understand the answer to that question, that he couldn't process what she had done without being able to label her reasons, even if he didn't agree with them; she knew him that well, besides her empathy telling her so. But the accusal in his voice, the betrayal she could feel in his heart. . .she had known her covert departure would cause upheaval and strife in the team, but she had never imagined it would be as bad as this. Emma knew Adam had been keeping secrets and that his concern over some of them had been growing, but she hadn't had any idea he would use the explosion of Naxcon to disappear, just as she had done.

When she had reinvented herself as 'Anne Smith' and fled to Los Angeles to help the Mutant Underground there, she had been bitterly shocked to learn Adam had disappeared at the same time she had "died". Emma could feel Eve's discomfort with the subject and suspected Adam was alive, but it was already too late by then. She had used her mental illusions to hide her identity from Eve, Owen, and poor Jamie, so she couldn't reveal the truth at that point. She had subtly coaxed Jamie through his despair over "Emma's death", and life had gone on. She had been nervous, manipulating his emotions as well as all of the Californian Mutant X team's perceptions of her, but she'd had to. She had been careful to only keep Jamie from overreacting, and subtly guided his impression on and attachment to "Anne" to simply replace Emma, which was no more than a white lie, since she was Emma.

She just couldn't be Emma anymore, couldn't take the risk of using the full extent of her powers. Every day that she forced Jamie's mind and emotions, every time she made Eve or Owen or Jamie perceive her to be only similar to Emma but not identical to their "lost" friend. . .she used every single instance of those situations to remind herself of why she had left, why she had fled New York and come to California in the first place. The temptation of the dark side of her abilities had been becoming too great, and she didn't want to become one of the things Mutant X fought against.

She didn't want to force her friends to defeat her, maybe even kill her.
So, she had left. Used the destruction of Shalimar's father's company as the perfect excuse to disappear, just as Adam had done –powerful minds thinking alike, maybe?– and she had reinvented herself in LA, where she could continue to make a difference, continue to help other New Mutants like her, just without the risk of being forced into situations where the temptation of her own powers would corrupt her.

Or so she had thought.
"You don't understand, Jesse," Emma said softly, but with a firmness in her voice that made Jesse turn around and look at her in surprise. "I only did what I had to do." Emma looked up to meet Jesse's eyes, her own gaze coming back from the middle distance of memory and distress to focus on him. "But there was always the temptation to do more. To make things better, to change people. To force people to do the right thing." Emma sighed and shook her head, but her eyes never ceased to meet Jesse's gaze.

She was thinking about Kovakistan and the broadband panic wave
she had broadcast there, then wiped Jesse's memory of it.

Or when she had psionically confronted Levak Ivanov after
he had mentally totured Shalimar, destroying his mind.
Jesse frowned as he thought back to when they had been introduced to "Anne" at Eloy's Diner, realizing her nerves had been legitimately her own, as she had claimed. . .Emma had been nervous that Shalimar, Brennan, or Jesse himself might have seen through her illusion, because they knew Emma much more intimately than Jamie, Owen, or Eve did. His expression grew harder as he realized "Anne's" confession of abusing her illusion ability in her youth had been another part of the bald-faced lie she had been telling her former teammates, her best friends...

He didn't realize that Emma had been telling the truth when she said telempathy would tempt her to take away the free will of others.

Emma's lips pursed slightly as her face hardened, her resolve firming as well.

"In a way, Jesse, I'm sorry that you're the one who found me out," Emma told him sadly, but her expression remained unchanged, her posture unmoving. "..But at the same time, it makes things easier, really."

Jesse's expression shifted to baffled confusion.

"Emma, what are you talking about? You know I can't keep this to myself..."

Jesse cut himself off in surprise as the irises of Emma's eyes went jet black.

"Actually..." Emma said as the starburst formed on her forehead. "..You Can."

Emma could see Chaplain leaning against the streetlight, grinning at Kevin's astral form where he held it trapped in an illusion of sensory deprivation. Emma could barely sense Kevin's astral form, but with her Psionic perceptions widened to figure out what Chaplain was doing, she had recognized him. The grey fog Chaplain had surrounded him with was a simple, static illusion; he was counting on Kevin's confusion to keep him immobilized while Chaplain tormented Shalimar with illusions of fire, an Arachnid Feral staggering away from her and ducking out of sight.

"Anne" screeched to a stop across the street and up the block from Eloy's Diner, a Psionic starburst flaring to life on her forehead.

"Help the team. I've got this guy," she told Jesse, then closed her darkened eyes.

Kevin was beginning to panic.

He had never experienced pain in his astral form before, then the truck had exploded, and he felt it... Kevin had considered going to check on his physical body, hoping he wasn't too injured by the explosion. . .then the world faded to grey nothing. It didn't make sense; if he was dead, then his astral form should have died too, it was just a projection from his Psionic brain. "Brain dead" should equal "no astral form". And if his body was in a coma, but his astral projection ability was still functioning, then his astral form ought to be able to perceive normally. What was going on? If he stopped projecting, would his death or coma be complete? Not that floating in grey nothingness was doing him any good...

A flare of golden light made Kevin spin around, and he gasped to see Anne there, in her magenta Psionic starburst form, like she had appeared when she had stabilized his powers. She glanced around with an unimpressed frown, one shockingly red eyebrow arching over her jet-black-yet-highlighted-white eyes. Her frown intensified as her brow lowered, all the nimbuses of light composing her body shifting to a deeper shade of magenta, closer to an angry red, and they were suddenly all rotating in unison.

^''Go on, Kevin,^'' she told him, the grey expanse of nothing around them fading a bit, becoming transparent enough that Kevin could see the parking lot of Eloy's Diner through it. He gasped to see Brennan struggling with a short blonde as they lay on the ground; but the sight that caught his attention was Josh, alive and well, crouched over Chris with Lexa.

^''Go back to your friends,^'' Anne said, waving one hand in an idle gesture and making the transparent green image of some preppy boy who clearly thought too much of his own hair appear. The man glanced around, startled, then turned to glare at Anne.

^''I've got this,^'' she finished, frowning at Chaplain's psychic image.

Trusting Anne at her word, Kevin willed himself to return to his body and vanished from the astral dreamscape Chaplain was projecting. Since his target had figured out it was safe to escape to his body and the intruder clearly wasn't fooled by his illusion, Chaplain allowed the grey expanse to fade away. He blinked in surprise when he realized the landscape around them was frozen, none of the New Mutants battling in the parking lot moving, nor the smoke coming from the exploded cars rising or drifting. . .everything was motionless.

Chaplain turned back to stare at Anne in shock as the color leeched out of everything but the two of them, the parking lot around them transforming into shades of grey. Those various shades melded into one as their contrasts and luminosities slowly averaged out. . .leaving the two of them standing in a featureless grey void.

^''Who are you?!^'' Chaplain asked, confused and frustrated, and not really understanding what was happening to him.

Emma sighed.

^''I'm someone who's having a bad day, and lucky you, you get to pay for it,^'' she muttered, a separate Psionic starburst manifesting on her forehead and swiftly growing to an enormous size and blinding intensity, floating above and in front of her head like an angry star. The starbursts composing the forehead of Emma's mental image changed color as Chaplain's transparent neon green image did, both of them shifting to a more yellow-green as Chaplain's fear grew.

^''Just pretend I said something clever, instead,^'' she told him, and the psi-bolt streaked into Chaplain's mind.

Chaplain's consciousness was dragged into the depths of his own subconscious mind and held there by his own illusion powers. The sensory input of his Psionic ability to detect other minds was blocked, so he was more alone than he had ever been in his entire life. Emma's telempathy suppressed Chaplain's confidence, and heightened his suspicion, paranoia, and the fear he was already feeling, connecting the portions of his mind that felt those emotions to his illusion powers.

He was literally trapped in his very own worst nightmares, using every trick he had on himself, completely alone.

Eve slowly straightened up, panting, watching as a drop of blood slowly collected on the tip of her partially-lowered sword, dripping to splat on the tarp between Davis' dead knees, crimson red on bright blue. She looked up from the spatter of blood to meet Bishop's crazed, grinning eyes, realizing he had precognitively known what was going to happen and laid out the tarp to facilitate removing Davis' body, or perhaps to keep the evidence of his blood contained. Or both.

"What did he do?" she asked suspiciously, narrowing her eyes at the derranged leader of the Links. She glanced down at Davis, wondering if he perhaps had a flash drive big enough to have copied the New Mutant database onto. He had only walked past Bishop and stood in front of him before she attacked, hadn't given Bishop anything, unless it was hidden...

"No, we didn't copy the New Mutant database at all," Bishop said with a grin at the same time Eve exclaimed:

"You—–didn't copy the New Mutant database at all, did you?" She blinked in surprise at his simultaneous statement; Bishop grinned in mad delight. "You said all you wanted with me was to chat, and even told me I'd need the tarp for using my rapier later," she said with a frown, her eyes unfocused as she reconsidered everything he had said and done and how it all fit together. "You only wanted to 'chat' with me because you wanted to keep me busy while Davis did something else, with my computers, and to set us both up for me to kill him," she declared, knowing she was correct. "Why? What did he do?" Eve demanded.

Bishop giggled.

"Just to shock you even more, I'll even answer that," he said with a smile. He began to approach Eve, circling around Davis' body. Eve turned to keep facing him, beginning to whip her sword back into line with Bishop...

..But his psi-bolt struck her first, causing her arms to drop and nearly making her collapse, crying out in pain as her limbs stopped responding to her brain's commands.

"You see, I'm a precognitive, my dear. I've seen the future, our futures, all my mutant Link friends and mine. . .and we don't wish to die on our expiry dates any more than your precious Mutant X does." Bishop chuckled, repeatedly, rocking back and forth on his heels as he looked into Eve's pain-tensed eyes.

"So, a bit of Telecyber work by the dearly departed Davis on your medical lab computers, and when you and Adam discover the cure, it will be relayed to a secured location I have access to. A bit of coersion applied to certain parties will get the treatment applied to me and mine, and the Links shall live on." Bishop grinned at Eve, smugly. "Congratulations, Doctor Aybel, you're going to save lots of New Mutants. And our forces will meet again."

Eve ignored his melodrama, focusing on the pertinent points of what he had told her:

"We'll get Adam back, and cure the team with his help?" she asked, wondering when the other shoe was going to drop, how Bishop's information was supposed to 'shock her even more.'

Bishop cackled, doubling over and horribly amused, then stopped abruptly and lifted his head to meet Eve's eyes.

"No," he told her, grinning malevolently.

"Adam will never return to you," he said with zealous glee, laughing maniacally, harder and louder as he shuffled closer to Eve, laughing right in her face.

"No no no, my dear, your Dear And Precious Mentor, Doctor Adam Kane, is dead. But that doesn't matter," he snickered, "Since we still get our cure. Your security system will never know we were here..." he told Eve, raising a hand and gently caressing the side of her face.

"Doctor deceived, her team as well. Hidden loves, going through Hell.
Betrayed anew by a familiar face. But the lost restored, despite the race."

he said as his eyes went jet black from lid to lid, then the blackness faded and his pale eyes met Eve's widened ones once more.

"..The system won't know we were here, and neither will you," he finished, an intense psi-bolt manifesting on his forehead and flashing into hers in the same instant. Eve's eyes sank shut as she collapsed, Bishop catching her beneath the arms and lowering her to the couch she'd been standing in front of.

"So I have seen, so it shall be," he declared, describing a circle in the air with the tip of his thumb, then crossed it from the upper right to the lower left. His ritual completed, Bishop turned to wrap Davis' body in the tarp and drag it away. He only had thirteen minutes to remove all traces of their presence in Haven: spill a bit of bleach in the rear storeroom and leave the bottle "accidentally" uncapped to cover his scent there, air out the medical lab and cycle its environmental seal to rid it of Davis' scent, and place Eve back in her chair behind the computer, as Davis had suggested. When he dragged Davis' body out the front door, it would automatically cycle shut and relock itself, triggering an electrical short that would fry the giant television, covering their scents in the lounge, and also short out the computer where Eve had been sitting, giving plausible reason for the blip in the security footage and her unconsciousness, as well as adding the scent of fried electronics to Haven's main expanse, masking his and Davis' scents there, as well.

Bishop smiled because he knew he would have more than a minute to spare. It wouldn't do for the lovely Shalimar and her Feral friends to be able to catch his scent and know he'd been there, now would it?

In the parking lot of Eloy's Diner, Francis Chaplain suddenly appeared behind the public mailbox next to the street with an anguished cry of surprise. He collapsed over the mailbox and slumped off of it, tumbling to the sidewalk in a heap.

"That was it!" Tonio called out in a pained voice as he struggled to his feet. "That was the sign!" Turning to the unconscious Charlie and wheezing Erra, the Links' Lupine Feral calmly pulled a handgun from inside his leather jacket and shot Charlie in the back of the head. Erra gasped even louder, in shock, and tried to crawl away, but she was on her back and unable to exert any force yet.

"Why!?" she panted, glaring at him with confusion and hatred.

"The GSA kept Gabriel in a pod for twenty-five years," he told her with a snarl as his eyes flashed the baleful yellow of a timber wolf's. "You're all traitors to your own kind, working for them. Gabriel loved us, but he wouldn't have forgiven you."

Tonio shot Erra in the face.

Janessa had leaped to Franklin and slashed through his bonds, still keening with pain and snarling with rage over her injured eyes. She sprang from Franklin to where Fulfer had collapsed and picked her up off the ground by her curly hair. Janessa buried her mandibles and fanged mouth in Fulfer's throat, tearing it out and guzzling the wash of blood that erupted. Tossing her corpse aside, the Arachnid Feral leaped up onto the roof of Eloy's Diner, easily slaughtering the injured Raygoza.

Once freed, Franklin moved up to the street, looking down at Chaplain's inert body with disgust.

"You? Are a narcissitic ass," he declared as he reached down and grabbed Chaplain's face. He pinched the illusionist's nose shut and closed his mouth, then sent the green aura of his adhesive ability into Chaplain's head. It wouldn't last all that long without his conscious control, but Franklin made sure it had enough of a charge that Chaplain would suffocate before it wore off.

Janessa leaped back down to the parking lot and screeched at Malcolm, shoving at him until he woke up. Muttering, he got to his feet and activated his power, transforming into Californian bedrock granite once more. He waded into the wreckage of the two burning cars in the corner of the parking lot, and stomped his granite foot through Nakamoto's unconscious head.

Shalimar had blinked in surprise when the blazing inferno around her vanished, glaring when she remembered Jamie figuring out the GSA New Mutants had an Illusionist Pionic among them. Squeezing out from behind the dumpster she had hid behind to shield herself from the "flames", she gasped in shock and then outrage to see the Links shamelessly slaughtering their former partners.

"What the Hell do you think you're doing!?" she cried out as she dashed forward. She froze when Tonio whipped around to point his gun at her; with his Feral reflexes, he could re-aim and fire just as fast as she could dodge aside.

"We think we're leaving," he told her as Jesse ran up to where Brennan was still struggling with Shauna. "Let her go," he called over to the two of them as the other Links gathered around him. "I can shoot at least one of you before you can stop me, and my partners can mess more of you up before you can take us down.

"Besides," he finished, smirking. "Weren't you all in a rush to get somewhere before we interrupted? Do you have time to deal with us when all we're doing now is leaving?" he asked as Brennan gave up and let Shauna go, Jesse crouching and trying to gauge the severity of Brennan's concussion.

"Fuck, he's right, Eve–!" Owen growled, glancing down past Jamie's unconscious form when Chris gasped on the ground. Damn, he had just finally started to begin calming down, too.

"Take my car!" Anne called as she ran up to them, throwing her keys to Shalimar. "Stacy, Eloy, and I will clean up here, claim it was a car bombing. We can't have the cops paying as much attention to the diner as they will otherwise," she explained, frowning at the things she knew she was going to have to do with her powers.

Tonio smnirked, lowering his gun but keeping his eyes on Mutant X.

"Later, Losers," he declared, as Shauna, Franklin, and Malcolm joined hands around him and Janessa. Combining their abilities, Shauna wrapped them in an electromagnetic bubble as Franklin used Malcolm's connection with the earth to render the ground beneath them frictionless. Shauna's EM field combined with Malcolm's molecular link with the ground beneath them, enabling her bubble to frictionlessly slip through the earth itself.

"Whoa. That's new!" Lexa said with surprise, watching as the five Links vanished through the asphalt surface of the parking lot without phasing.

"Probably just dropped into the sewer, or a utility tunnel," Jesse decided, still shaking his head in disbelief, regardless. "What did the Feral mean, you're in a rush? What happened?"

"Eve's in trouble," Kevin said as he rejoined the group, giving Josh a sappy smile when Josh both grinned and sighed in relief to see him mostly well. "Chris said she's got hostiles with her, in Haven. Let's move."

Kevin rubbed his arms briskly as he and Josh turned towards where Josh's Sunfire was parked nose-to-nose with the sad remains of Eve's Range Rover.

"Also, I'm shirtless in late September. Wind's chilly," he muttered.

"Dude, it's seventy freakin' degrees, that is not chilly," Josh protested. "Washington winters are chilly. Chicago autumns are chilly, and the winter's freezing. This? Is still warm." Josh looked like he wanted to pull Kevin into a full-body embrace to share heat with anyway, but he didn't want to aggravate Kevin's burns.

Owen glanced at the original team following Shalimar towards Anne's tiny Honda. Between a Honda and a Pontiac sports coupe, there was no way he and Brennan were going to fit in the same car.

"Shotgun," he muttered, turning towards Josh's Sunfire. "Keep the Elementals together," he told Chris, who scowled and hurried after the others to cross the street.

They all hurried home to Haven, Jesse driving Anne's car and Shalimar squished between Chris and Lexa in the back seat. Kevin sat awkwardly in the rear of Josh's car, his legs tangled with Jamie's in the footwell behind Josh's seat, Owen's moved back all the way and slightly reclined to even get him to fit in the car. Kevin was also leaning into Jamie's space to keep his burned back from coming into contact with anything, but Jamie was still out cold, so he didn't mind.

The team arrived at Haven to find Eve investigating the strange power surge that had destroyed the mega-screen TV and fried the secondary medical lab console. She had no idea what Chris was talking about, but she could tell something had happened; Chris looked like he'd been hit by a truck. Eve couldn't remember the computer shorting out and knocking her unconscious, but it could wait until after Jamie had been patched up, not to mention Kevin's back.

Bishop's plan seemed to be working as he had forseen.

TO BE CONTINUED...